The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene - Ray Ginger

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THE BENDING CROSS

A BIOGRAPHY OF EUGENE VICTOR DEBS
RAY GINGER
INTRODUCTION BY MIKE DAVIS
Haymarket Books
Chicago, illinois
Originally published in 1947 by Rutgers University Press
1947 Ray Ginger
Introduction 2007 Mike Davis
This edition published in 2007 by Haymarket Books
P.O. Box 180165, Chicago, IL 60618
773-583-7884
www.haymarketbooks.org
Thade distribution:
In the U.S. through Consortium Book Sales, www.cbsd.com
fu the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, w w ~ l c o m
In Australia, Palgrave MacMillan. www.palgravemacmillan.com.au
Cover design by Josh On
Cover image of Eugene Debs, 1908. Caption in an unknown publication reads
"Eugene V. Debs presenting the Socialist point of view to the
voters of Waterbury, Connecticut, in the course of his
speech-making tour through the East on "The Red Special' which may be seen
in the bar:kground." Courtesy of the Debs Collection, Cunningham Memorial
Library, Indiana State University.
Haymarket Books wishes to extend its gratitude to Victoria Branden for her
willingness to help us republish this important book.
This book was published with the generous support of the
Wallace Global Fund.
Printed in Canada by union labor on recycled paper
containing 50 percent post-consumer waste in accordance with the
guidelines of the Green Press Initiative, www.greenpressinitiative.org
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
CONTENTS
Introduction Let the. "Red Special"
Shine Its Light on Me
by Mike Davis XL
Part I The Railway Brotherhoods 1
Part II The American Railway Union 85
Part III American Socialism 185
Part IV ~ o r l Socialism 315
Selected Chapter Sources 460
Bibliography 489
Index 503
For the late Peter Fagan,
W1w could have told this story far better than I have done
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author owes his sincere thanks to the following publiBhers
and individuals for permission to reprint material in this book:
Johnson Baur, Robert F. Baur, Mrs. Annette Baur Calder, Mrs. Ray-
mond P. Harris, and Mrs. Cecelia Baur Marti.n for numerous selec-
tions from the letters of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V. Debs.
Bobbs-Merrill Company: for selections from The Letters of Ja1TU!:1 Whit-
00'TTIb Riley, edited by William Lyon Phelps, copyright 1980.
University of Chicago Press: for a selection from Ralph Chaplin,
Wobbly, copyright 1948.
Mrs. Marguerite Debs Cooper and Mrs. Theodore Debs for selections
from the letters of Theodore Debs.
Crown Publishers: for selections from Clyde R. Miller, The Proceas of
PerlfU(J,8i,un, copyright 1946.
Mrs. Clarence Darrow: for portions of a letter from Clarence Darrow
to Mrs. Kate Debs, November 5, 19!16.
Dodd, Mead & Company: for selections from Al1an Nevins, Grove,
Olet1eland, copyright 1 9 8 ~
Doubleday & Company: for a selection from Joseph P. Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilaun As I Know Him, copyright 1 9 ~ 1 ..
E. P. Dutton & Company: for selections from Samuel Gompers,
Sel1enty Years of Life and Labor, copyright 1 ~
Greenberg, Publisher: for selections from McAlister Coleman, Eugene
V. Deb", copyright 1980. ..
Harcourt, Brace & Company: for selections from Heywood Broun,
It Seems to Me, 1925-1935, copyright 1985; from Carl Sandburg,
The American Sungbag, copyright 1 9 ~ 7 ; from Lincoln Steffens,
Autobiography, copyright 1981; from The Letters of Lincoln Steffens,
edited by Ella Wmter and Granville Hicks, copyright 1988.
Harvard University Press: for a selection from The Holmes-Pdlock
Letters, edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe, copyright 1941.
Henry Holt & Company: for selections from Oscar Ameringer, If Yau
Dun't Wealeen, copyright 1940.
Houghton Mi:ffiin Company: for selections from Henry James, Richard
Olney & His Public Service, copyright 1 9 ~
vii
viii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Indiana University: for selections from Floy Ruth Painter, That Man
Deb8 and HUt Life Work, 1929.
International Publishers: for selections from Ella Reeve Blool, We
Are Many, copyright 1940; from William D. Haywood, Bin Hay-
'lJJfXXfs Book, copyright 1929.
Charles H. Kerr & Company: for selections from william H. Car-
wardine, The PuUman Strike. copyright 1894; from Arthur Morrow
Lewis, The Art of Lecturing, copyright 1908.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: for a selection from Emma Goldman. Linng My
Life, copyright 1981.
Dr. Robert L. Leslie: for selections from Art Young: HUt Life and Ti1M8,
copyright 1989.
Sinclair Lewis: for a selection from his letter to Mrs. Kate Debs. April
80,1927. .
Liveright Publishing Company: for a selection from Art Young, On My
Way, copyright 1928.
Macmillan Company: for selections from John R. Commons, Myself,
copyright 1984; from Granville Hicks, John Reed, copyright 1986;
from Morris Hillquit,Loose Leaves from a Busy Life, copyright 1984;
from Ernest Poole, The Bridge, copyright 1940; from William Allen
White, The Editor and His People, copyright 1 9 ~
Princeton University Press: for a selection from Grover Cleveland,
The GO'08rnmen/, in the Chicago Strike qf 1894, copyright 1918.
G. P. Putnam's Sons: for selections from Caro Lloyd, Henry Demarest
Lloyd, copyright 1912.
Rinehart & Company: for a selection from Floyd Dell, HomecQ'TT/ing,
copyright 1988.
Carl Sandburg: for a selection from his letter to Eugene V. Debs.
November 26, 1 9 ~ 2
Charles Scribner's Sons: for selections from Clarence Darrow, The
Story oj My Life, copyright 1982.
Scores of persons have contributed their memories and manu-
script material to this story. Some of them gave much, others
considerably less, but they all showed a cooperation and kind-
ness which heightened my understanding of the Debs' traditions
as they have been preserved in our own time. Without their
help this book could never have attained its present form:
Louis Austin
Roger Baldwin
Oscar Baur
Robert F. Bam
Frank Bohn
William E. Bohn
Alfred Bosch
Louis B. Boudin
ACKNOWLEDGME'NTS
George D. Brewer
Earl Browder
Mrs. Annette Baur Calder
William H. Chetham
August Claessens
McAlister Coleman
Mrs. Marguerite Debs Cooper'
Florence Crawford
Solon DeLeon
ChesterMcA. Destler
Mrs. Carabelle G.'Dickey
Mrs. Edith Love Drake
Delbert Earley
Mrs. Max Ehrmann
Charles W. Ervin
Lee Walker Evans
Ed Evinger
Mr. and Mrs. Peter Fagan
S. Feinstein
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Philip S. Foner
H. O. Fuhrberg
Adolph Germer
Carl Haessler
Covington Hall
Mr. and Mrs. Powers Hapgood
Mrs. Raymond P. Ha.rris
Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Heath
Fred Heinl
G. A. Hoehn
John Haynes Holmes
Mrs. Frank Anstead Hughes
John Keracher
Sol Klapma.n
Mrs. Yetta Land
Louis Lazarus
Algernon Lee
Lena Morrow Lewis
A. R. Markle
Mrs. Cecelia Baur Martin
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Minor
Dr. M. L. Nearing
Scott Nearing
Sam Nesin
Martin E. O'Connell
Winifred O'Connell ,
Frank P. O'Hare
James Oneal
John Panzner
Lesley Payne
Frank Pfister
John C. Prechtel
Howard H. Quint
Helen Ross
Mrs. Clarence Royse
Lena Schuhardt
Oswald Schuhardt
Will S\!huhardt
Mr. a.nd Mrs. Shubert Sebree
David A. Shannon
Mr. and Mrs. John R. Shannon
Harry Sheer
Upton Sinclair
Alvin G. Slemons
Mrs. Seymour Stedman
Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Sugar
Norman Thomas
Laurence Todd
Alexander Trachtenberg
Mary Heaton Vorse
Allred Wagenknecht
Mrs. Frank Casper Wagner
Phil Wagner
Mrs. Sherman D. Wakefield
James Peter Warbasse
Harry F. Ward
Fred D. Warren
William Weinstone
Noble C. Wilson
Peter Witt
Morris H. Wolf
John M. Work
Rose Wortis
Dr. ,and Mrs. J. Rudolph Yung
x'
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In addition to the persons listed above as actnal contributors
to this volume, I applied for information from an even larger
group who either refused or neglected to comply. This is not
meant to imply criticism of these persons, but is merely men-
tioned by way of saying that I have not knowingly neglected
any potential source of facts.
Miss Agnes Inglis of the Joseph A. Labadie Collection at the
University of Michigan rendered invaluable assistance for more
than a year; the Rand School of Social Science for two months;
Mrs. Hazel Hopper, Mr. Howard H. Peckham, and their col-
leagues at the Indiana State Library for several weeks. I have
also used material from the following depositories: University of
Chicago Library, Chicago Historical Society, John Crerar
Library of Chicago, Library of Congress, Fairbanks Library of
Terre Haute, lllinois Historical Society, New York City Public
Library, Wisconsin Historical Society,and the Yale University
Library. In each case the institution's staff has shown extreme
skill and consideration in making, data available for my use.
Portions of the manuscript have been read, always with in
cisiveness and compassion, by Dr. Arno L. Bader and Dr. L. G.
VanderVelde of the University of Michigan, Prof. Joseph H.
Friend of Cleveland College, David A. Shannon of the Carnegie
Institute of Technology, Harry Barnard, Mary B. Land and
Louis H. Pollak. Without doubt they have reservations about
the result, and any faults rest with the author rather than with
his critics. .
Finally, at the risk of seeming impertinent or ungenerous, I
want to record that I am hugely beholden to my wife, Ann
Fagan Ginger, who has served as bulwark and helpmeet through
hill -
CLEVELAND, omo
NOVEMBER, 1948
Ray Ginger
INTRODUCTION
LET THE "RED SPECIAL"
SHINE ITS LIGHT ON" ME
Unlike many of my contemporaries in the 1960s New Left, I
never wore red diapers. I could not brag about a brave yiddisher
grandmother who barred the door to the Black Hundreds, a grand-
father who knew Lenin, or parents who raised money to send am-
bulances to Spain or fell in love at a Paul Robeson concert.
Although 1 grew up in a strong union household where Pat Gorman
(the Meat Cutters' leader) and FDR were paternal deities, there
were no Earl Browder buttons or Little Red Songbooks hidden away
in my parents' dresser. We were just ordinary blue-collar Democ-
rats. And yet, like many people from a non-Left background, I
have a small but important trace of Eugene Victor Debs in my fam-
ily history-a homely testament to his enduring influence.
Debs? For generatio",s, Gene Debs, along with the working-class
politics to which he dedicated his life, has been censored from our
school curricula, or worse, reduced to a mere curiosity: the Social-
ist who won 6 per cent of the presidential vote in 1912. Like his
own personal hero,)ohn Brown of Harper's Ferry, Debs' life and
purpose fit awkwardly into respectable historical pantheons or nar-
ratives of national progress. Yet Debs, the ghost of that other, radi-
cal America, refuses to go away. Whether as the leader of the
Pullman strikers in 1894, as a founder of the Industrial Workers of
the World in 1905, as the Socialist presidential candidate in 1912,
or as Woodrow Wilson's most famous political prisoner in 1920, he
loomed too large in contemporary history to be easily expunged by
the condescension of an ignorant or hostile posterity.
Like so many grateful readers, I first encountered Debs through
Ray Ginger's extraordinary biography, and I met Gingerthanks to
the powder-blue '55 Chevy that I plowed into a wall while street
xu THE BENDING CROSS
racing with drunken teenage friends on Valentine's Day, 1964.
While I was in the hospital, my kindly father brought me a copy of
The Bending Cross (first published in 1949)-probably in the
hope of weaning me away from the junk hot rod books (Crash Car
Club, Hot Rod Inferno, and so on) to which I was notoriously ad-
dicted. His union, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher
Workmen, were instrumental in the restoration of Debs' home in
Terre Haute, Indiana, and he thought I might find some mature in-
spiration in Ginger's biography. My mother, who ceaselessly re-
minded us that she was not a "mushy liberal" like my dad (her
favorite president was Calvin Coolidge), argued that a few months
in juvenile hall or preferably San Quentin would improve my
character far more than a good book; nonetheless, she took a peek
at the Ginger and said "your granddad liked him."
This was a surprising revelation, to say the least. When my
feisty Irish grandfather, Jack Ryan, came back from charging up
San Juan Hill (or whatever he actually did during the battle of
Santiago in 1898), he greatly annoyed his new in-laws in Colum-
bus, Ohio, by becoming an outspoken supporter of Teddy Roo-
sevelt and the Progressive wing of the Republican Party. My
grandmother's clan, the Mulligans, were members of the railroad
brotherhoods, and staunch Democrats to the last pint. (One great-
uncle used to avow that voting GOP was almost as unthinkable as
"being seen in public drinking lemonade with a Methodist.") Yet
until he finally switched to FDR in 1936, my grandfather re-
mained a loyal Republican (thus my mother's odd affinity to Silent
Cal), with the striking exception of the 1920 presidential election,
when he voted for a Socialist convict rather than for Ohio's native
son and the GOP nominee, Senator Warren G. Harding.
Nearly a million Americans, in fact, voted for federal prisoner
number 9653 in 1920, and many of them were odd comrades like
my Republican grandfather: people who didn't necessarily agree
with Debs' politics but who admired his devotion to the cause of
labor and his courage in speaking out against the carnage of the
First World War. According to my mother, my grandfather had
once heard Debs speak from the caboose of his famous "Red Spe-
cial," the train that carried him across the Midwest during the
election of 1908, and was appalled that" America's conscience"
LET THE "RED SPECIAL" SHINE ITS LIGHT ON ME Xlll
had been sentenced to ten years in federal prison for criticizing
President Wilson and the war in his famous Canton, Ohio, speech
in June 1918. He was particularly angry at Wilson for keeping
Debs and hundreds of other Socialists and trade unionists in
prison long after Arrilistice, and for deporting thousands of "sub-
versive aliens" in 1919 without any semblance of due process.
Grandpa thought Wilson was drunk on power, intoxicated by his
own sanctimonious rhetoric.
Indeed the dramatic collision between Wilson and Debs, which
Ginger sketches with such skill, was one of the great moral-politi-
cal confrontations in modem American history, pitting self-right-
eous Progressivism against defiant Socialism. My grandfather,
although a Bull Moose Progressive himself, despised Wilson's
high-fallutin' hypocrisy and Calvinist intolerance. Although Wil-
son remains enshrined in textbook mythology as the "great ideal-
ist," he was, in fact, the most ruthless presidential enemy of civil
liberties and conscientious dissent in American history.
The witch hunts and blacklists of the early Cold War years pale
next to the antiradical reign of terror unleashed by the Wilson ad-
ministratiofL In addition to imprisoning the leaderships of the In-
dustrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party of America,
Wilson suppressed the radical press, imposed martial law on the
militant mining towns of Montana and Arizona, sent federal bayo-
nets to enforce rule in the logging camps of the Pacific
Northwest, and unleashed the vigilantes of the American Protec-
tive League to hunt down draft dodgers, burn radical bookstores,
and beat up and even lynch immigrant radicals. While pontificat-
ing about the "rights of smaIl nations," he invaded Mexico, Haiti,
and the Dominican Republic, as well as sent two large expedi-
tionary forces to aid the Whites in the Russian Civil War. In con-
trast to these aggressive interventions, the aristocratic white
supremacist from Virginia refused to lift a finger as African Amer-
icans were slaughtered in the streets of East Sl Louis in 1917 and
Chicago in 1919.
If this politics of presidential despotism, domestic repression,
XlV
THE BENDING CROSS
and overseas intervention-all perfumed by endless, pious hom-
ily-sounds familiar, it is surely because Woodrow Wilson, just as
much as Ronald Reagan or Dick Nixon, is the template for George
W. Bush; and if only because Debs was the foremost public oppo-
nent of Wilson's liberal imperialism, his life and politics deserve
our close attention today. But the railroad fireman from Indiana-
who was only fourteen years old when he first went to work for 50
cents a day in the shops of the Vandalia line-also remains an in-
comparable paradigm of character for those who would dare
change the world.
In these unheroic times-a cynical "age of lead" much like the
1920s-it is easy to lose faith in human transformation: by age
thirty, at the latest, most contemporary activists have seen the
ranks of their cause winnowed more by ambition and selfishness
than by repression orfatigue. It is easy to believe that species
lacks the requisite gene for socialist fellowship and the coopera-
tive commonwealth. We see so little evidence of radical selfless-
ness or unwavering commitment to principle that we are almost
obligated to accept reactionary definitions of human nature as in-
herently competitive, acquisitive, and small-minded. Perhaps it is
inevitable that young radicals become middle-aged conservatives,
that shop-floor rebels become autocratic trade-union bureaucrats,
and that civil rights heroes end up as jaded pols in the
moral wasteland of the Democratic Party. And perhaps in conse-
quence, it is better to quietly cultivate anarchy in the woods of
Oregon or simply throw in the towel and get an MBA.
In contrast, The Bending Cross offers us an old-fashioned-and,
yes, incorrigibly romantic-ethos for activism; an antidote to
jaded postmodemist cynicism, made compelling and coherent by
the example of Debs' own life. It is ironic that the Socialist leader
was imprisoned for "disloyalty," since what most distinguished
Debs was his moral steadfastness and unbreakable loyalty to the
labor movement. When the Cleveland administration mobilized
both the cavalry and the courts to destroy the American Railway
Union, Debs' first act after his release from jail was to personally
assume all the union's debts, even though it took him more than
fifteen years to repay them. Likewise, when anti-war Socialists
and IWWers were packed offto prison in 1917 and 1918 by the
LET THE "RED SPECIAL" SHINE ITS LIGHT ON ME xv
hundreds, Debs vowed to join them, despite such poor health that
his family feared he was courting a death sentence.
But Debs' moral stature, as Ginger shows, grew directly out of
the extraordinary culture of comradeship and solidarity that had
been forged in the epic labor struggles of the 1890s and 1900s. In
an age when defeated strikers were blacklisted for life and posses-
sion of a union card (especially if it was red) could bring a beating
or imprisonment, militant workers had to rely upon the impas-
sioned bonds of sisterhood and fraternity. Within the Socialist
Party, especially its grassroots, this became an ethic of love and
celebration: a warmth of comradeship that suffuse"d the movement
in its early years despite endless quarrels and factional battles.
Debs was the personification of the ideal of the "good com-
rade," and he drew his wages not from high office or celluloid
celebrity but from the love of the common people. In tum, he con-
stantlyministered strength and optimism to an often weary and
demoralized rank and file. Thus Ginger describes an incident as
Debs was boarding the train in Terre Haute in 1918 for his grim
trip to federal prison: "A coal miner emerged from the crowd and
grabbed Debs' arm: 'We're with you, Gene-by God, we're with
you to the last man.' Debs kissed the man's cheek and murmured,
'I know it. Until the last drop we'll stand together, all of us. Only
by standing together can we hope for victory. You boys take care of
the outside and I'll take care of the inside.'"
Debs' famous warmed-heartedness has often been patronizingly
rendered by non-socialist writers as evidence of a generous but
naive character: H. 1. Mencken, for example, famously praised the
imprisoned Socialist as the "most decent man in America" but
then dismissed his life's work as a fool's errand. Liberals and social
democrats, for their part, frequently portray Debs as a sympathetic,
even tragic figure, who contributed nobly to the march of reform
despite his hopeless romance with an "American revolution."
The Bending Cross should disabuse readers of preconceptions
that Debs was either a holy fool or a utopian forerunner of the New
Deal. As Ginger amply demonstrates, Debs fully deserved the
subversive reputation imputed to him by the robber barons and
Presidents Cleveland and Wilson. He was a fierce fighter for so-
cialjustice in exactly the same sense as John Brown and Malcolm
XVI THE BENDING CROSS
X, and despite his hatred of violence, he did not hesitate to advo
cate armed selfdefense to besieged Colorado miners, or remind
middleclass comrades that the Cooperative Commonwealth and
its reign of kindness would most likely be inaugurated by a revo-
lutionary war. No one-not Mother Jones nor even Big Bill Hay.
wood-had taken part in as many strikes, walked as many picket
lines, or generally been on as many battlefields of the class war as
Debs. He may have been the unifying figure-indeed, the very
fulcrum--of the Socialist Party, but he consistently sided with the
left wing during the great, splintering controversies over the
IWW's supposed advocacy of "sabotage," opposition to war and
conscription, and support forthe October Revolution.
If the liberal or socialdemocratic Debs is a man of the Middle
West-Main Street Terre Haute, pure and simple-the real Debs,
however untravelled outside the old fortyeight, was a central fig-
ure of international socialism, part of that heroic handful of promi-
nent prewar leaders including Jean Jaures, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl
Liebknecht, James Connolly, Leon Trotsky, and V.I. Lenin who op-
posed the Second International's capitulation to war frenzy and
mass murder. His internationalism was repeatedly demonstrated
in his enthusiasm for the Mexican Revolution, his support for the
Irish and Indian revolts, and his immediate and passionate soli-
darity with the revolutionary experiment in Russia. "Nikolai
Lenin," Ginger observes, "fully reciprocated Debs' respect and
admiration," and in his famous '''Letter to American Workers"
(1918) praised the incarcerated war resister as the embodiment of
the finest qualities of the American working class.
Debs, of course, also embodied some of its flaws. Like other
radical American labor leaders, he tended to imbibe everything
except theory, and had little interest in the complex details of cap
italist reproduction and economic crisis. He became a proud
Marxist, but was more apt to quote Victor Hugo (after whom he
had been named) or Abraham Lincoln in his speeches. Despite
his innumerable friendships with leading modernists and bohemi-
ans, his literary and cultural affinities remained with the over-
wrought sentimentalism of the 1870s and 1880s (although Debs
was never as hopelessly old-fashioned or straightlaced as his close
friend, Upton Sinclair).
LET THE "RED SPECIAL" SHINE ITS LIGHT ON ME XVll
More importantly, his powerful identification with the Aboli-
tionist tradition coexisted for many years with tolerance of the
racism that pervaded the segregated railroad brotherhoods. Al-
though he ultimately became a brave and outspoken defender of
racial equality, his vision of industrial unionism as the great en-
gine of social change left little conceptual or programmatic space
for the autonomous revolutionary-democratic role of Black libera-
tion movements.
Ginger is hard nosed about Debs' tendency toward cant (almost
inevitable in a lifetime of continuous oratory), his too-frequent so-
journs in the saloon, and his failure to use his jaij experiences to
properly educate himself in social theory and history. Yet Debs is
all the more irresistible for his common humanity, and his excess
of rhetorical sentimentality (and occasionally drink) hardly de-
tracts from the moral grandeur of his defiant stands or the strategic
clarity of his synthesis of industrial unionism and left-wing social-
ism. Debs was the American Left's better angel, but not alone, and
The Bending Cross introduces us to a beloved community of kin-
dred spirits: Henry Demarest Lloyd, Kate Richards O'Hare,
Mother Bloor, Floyd Dell, Jack London, David Karsner, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Frank Harris, Ralph Chaplin, John Reed, Alfred
Wagenknecht, Fred Warren, Carl Sandburg, Art Young, Theodore
Debs, and the many others who once rode the "Red Special."
When Ginger wrote this book in 1949, some of the principal fig-
ures of Debsian socialism were still alive, and the Communist
Party had not yet been shattered by McCarthyite persecution and
Khrushchev's revelations of Stalin's crimes. Now, almost three gen-
erations later, the New Left has come and gone, and some of the
key events of Debs' life, like the Pullman Strike, are now buried in
the century before last. The ultimate meaning of Debsian socialism
depends on whether or not the current generation wants to weave
its own link to this rebel past. It remains, in other words, to the
reader to decide what she will take from this wonderful biography,
and whether the long-ago lives of Debs and his comrades inspire
us to emulation, or just shame at our own sad time.
Mike Davis
February 2007
Part I.
The Railroad Brotherhoods
As sure as a man will raise his hand by some
instinct, to shield himse1f against a blow,
so surely will workingmen, instinctively,
periodicaJly, gather into unions. The
Union is the ann that Labor in-
stinctively throws np to screen
its head. DANIEL DELEON
C H'A PTE R I
[ 1 ]
I
N LATE MAY, 1851, a flatboat swung ponderously away
. from the western bank of the Wabash River and nosed
. into the dock at the foot of Main Street.
1
Daniel and
Marguerite Debs gazed with apprehension at the frontier town
of Terre Haute, Indiana, their new home. Already a bleaching
sun and thousands of hooves had ground the Terre Haute
streets into a heavy brown dust. Dust settled in Daniel's beard;
it covered bis six-foot frame; particles landed on his l o n ~
straight nose and muddied in the sweat. The man stirred. Bad
luck had followed him since leaving his native Alsace nearly
three years earlier; Terre Haute seemed to offer a last chance.
At first sight that chance was anything but reassuring.
A restless stream of French-Canadian trappers, Welsh and
Scotch-Irish farmers, German merchants from the Old CountIy,
had been pouring into western Indiana for thirty years. They
found a region of immense opportunity. A stream of wealth was
sweated from the rich bottomland. Days and months and years
formed a restless cycle: plant corn in the spring, harvest in the
autumn, feed the hogs and ship the pork on flatboats to New
Orleans. Men made money and bought land and made more
money and nobody cared much about other things. There was
no time for sanitation, or gentle living, or even rest. It was raw,
new country, and a man was a fool to miss his chance.
By 1850 more than fifty thousand hogs a year were. being
slaughtered in the butcheries which spread their stench along
the banks of the Wabash. Livestock were pastured on the court-
house lawn, tied to the wooden fences, or left to wander at will
through the streets. Men wore boots, carried guns, spat tobacco
juice carelessly across flour barrels. The town was goaded by a
1 Throughout this work, all facts have heeD carefully checked, and all quota-
tions are deemed authenic.
3
THE BENDING CROSS
single passion: get yours, ge tit quick, make it grow. Terre Haute
was a strange place for a refined, philosophical immigrant.
[ 16 ]
JEAN DANIEL DEBS (everyone called him Daniel, never Jean)
was born at Colmar, Alsare, on December 4, 18iO. His father,
owner of textile mills and meat markets, member of exclusive
clubs, sent Daniel to school in Paris and Waldersbach, where the
boy gained a deep love of French and German romanticists-
Goethe, Schiller. Eugene Sue, Victor Hugo. For two and a half
centuries, members of the Debs family had been among the
men of affairs in Colmar, but Daniel grew away from commercial
activities. His ancestors were bakers, merchants, surveyors.
surgeons; he an expert on the latest poetry and a connoisseur of
fine prints. To complete this heresy, Daniel obstinately con-
tinued to court Marguerite Marie Bettrich, who worked in one
of his father's mills. The family quarrel was bitter: the father
insisted that their'social position must be maintained. and
Daniel replied that his private life was a matter that he alone
must decide. The wrangling persisted until the father suddenly
died in the spring of 1848.
Now Daniel was free to go his own way, and his first thought
was of America. Immersed in the ferment of his own life, the
young emigrant unconsciously was swept along by another
ferment that touched many lives. The streets of nearly every
capitol in Europe had learned the bitterness of blood and treach-
ery and shattered hope. In France and Germany, Hungary and
Austria, the workers had thrust boldly for control of the gov-
ernment, but the business classes had deserted the uprisings to
side with the aristocracy. The revolutions were smashed by
rulers who struck back savagely. These events were almost un-
noticed by the young emigrant. Although his ancestors had
led the French Revolution in Colmar, his father had deserted
politics for money-making, and mind was filled with
his own problems:--the death of his father, his love for Mar-
guerite, his futuxe in America. ,
The political refugees who were determined to rebuild their
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS 6
lives in America were fleeing without money or goods; Daniel
was well dressed and his wallet filled with bank notes. The
seventy-one day voyage, however, allowed ample time for an
American businessman to fleece Daniel of his savings, and he
landed penniless in New York City on January 20, 1849. At
once he began to write daily to "'Daisy," as he called Marguerite.
begging her to join him; for months she daily refused, tormented
by the fear that the difference in their training would make a
happy marriage impossible. At last resorting to the dramatic,
Daniel swore he would commit suicide iI his beloved did not
come to this country. Daisy arrived in New York on September
11 and they were married two days later.
The ill fortune which had been heralded by the loss of Daniel's
savings haunted the couple. A daughter died within a short
w.hile after her birth. In grief, Daisy and Daniel moved west-
ward to Cincinnati, and their furniture, shipped by flatboat
down the Ohio River, drifted past its destination to New Orleans
and was never recovered. It was then that Daisy and Daniel
decided to settle at the large French community in Terre Haute.
[ 3 ]
IN 1851, Terre Haute held fewer than six thousand people. Dan-
iel found that he could cross the town in less than fifteen min-
utes, starting at the covered county bridge overthe river, walking
a block north to Main Street, and then less than a mile east to
the Wabash and Erie Canal. But due to its location at the inter-
section of the river, the canal, and the National Road, the town
was growing rapidly. Daniel had little trouble finding a job in
one of the packing houses; from dawn to dusk he stuck to the
miserable, grueling labor. Wages were low and the lunches which
Daisy carried to her husband were often too meager for a man
who worked fourteen hours a day with his hands and his back.
Blow followed blow; another daughter died before she could be,
named. Daniel left the packing house before the unsanitary con-
ditions there completely broke his health. He tried job after job,
and finally went to work laying tieson the Vandalia, the first
railroad to come through Terre Haute. After two days, no longer
6 THE BENDING CROSS
able to hold the pick handle which had worn huge blisters on
his hands, he was laid off. The endless struggle went on, one
ill-paid job after another, and no rest.
Then, at last, a daughter was born who lived, and she was
given the same two names as her mother, Marie Marguerite.
But Daisy and Daniel feared greatly for the life of their child.
Sanitation was unknown. Hogs and cattle wandered through
the town. Garbage was thrown into the streets. Stagnant water
in the canal was an ideal breeding place for mosquitoes, so that
malaria epidemics swept the population. Yellow fever was a
constant threat during the long and hot summers. Doctors were
few; medical facilities were primitive. Unexplained deaths were
often attributed to "chills and fever" or to "vapors rising from
the newly plowed ground." Money was dear, but the life of a
baby was cheap .in Terre Haute. So in the spring of 1854, when
an ague epidemic the young parents hastily re-
treated to New York.
Another daughter was born soon after they reached Brooklyn.
and Daniel quickly found that supporting two children in the
East was at least as difficult as feeding one on the frontier. That
autumn, when the ague epidemic had passed, the Debs family
returned to Terre Haute. This time Daisy found a means of
livelihood; she invested the last forty dollars of family savings
in a stock of groceries and opened a store in the front room of
their house. Daniel was heartbroken; he thought the venture
would surely fail and leave them penniless. But the young
couple were well liked by the French colony in Terre Haute and
Daniel had learned the butcher trade from his father. Within a
few months the family was earning a decent living.
In the two-story frame house and store on North Fourth
Street, their first son was born November 5. 1855. Daniel, think-
ing that he had found in the writings of Eugene Sue and Victor
Hugo a tradition of reason and justice by which men should
live, named his son Eugene Victor Debs. The older children
had been baptized Roman Catholics, but Daisy had failed to
find in Terre Haute the serene security of her cathedral in
Colmar. Her ensuing doubts were promoted by her Protestant
husband. The last ties were severed before Eugene was born,
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS
7
and he began life unblessed by the sanctions of organized re-
ligion.
The frontier vi1lage was pleasant for a young child. Broad
meadows furnished an ideal place for picnics, and the wooded
western shore of the Wabash promised a thousand adventures.
Small boats could be floated in the puddles which formed in the
clay streets, and the canal, noW seldom used for larger traffic,
was a half block from the Debs' house. H a child survived, he
had his chance for success and happiness; but life itself was un-
certain. Several times Eugene Debs, buried under blankets yet
shaking with fever, spent horrible days and nights suffering
from the Wabash shakers, a type of ague.
In 1861, when Eugene Debs was five years old, the Civil War
began. Before the war there was little antislavery feeling around
Terre Haute, for most of the population was Southern-born, and
the region's exports moved through Southern territory to 'New
Orleans. The 1851 state constitution deprived all Negroes of
the right to vote, and the 1860 elections sent to Congress from
'J;erre Haute Daniel W. Voorhees, whose viewpoint on slavery
had been flatly expressed: "'Property in slaves is not to be dis-
tinguished from other kinds of property protected by the Con-
stitution." But after the shots at Fort Sumter, most men in
Terre Haute united to defend the Union. Recruiting offices were
flooded; Indiana's quota was filled more than' twice within a
week. A camp was organized on the outskirts of the town, and a
preacher there took as his text: "In the name of our God we set
up our banners."
The blockade of the Mississippi and increased transport needs
made Terre Haute into a booming railroad center, and Eugene
spent many afternoons idly watching troop trains move through
the town. To him the locomotive, beckoning toward a future
where brave men conquered danger, seemed more, far more,
than a mere dirty engine towing a string of dirty cars. Men wear-
ing blue denim jackets and engineers' Caps swaggered through
the streets, and small boys dreamed of becoming railroad en-
gineers.
Proslavery sentiment lasted throughout the war, each elec-
tion posing anew the question of whether Indiana would remain
8
THE BENDING CROSS
in the Union. Politics, always a serious matter in the rural
Midwest, reached a fierce crescendo of partisanship. One Fourth
of July two separate celebrations were held, one by the Union
faction, which Daniel favored, and another by the Confederate
sympathizers. The entire town feared a clash between the two,
but the day passed peacefully. On another occasion the city
:Was thrown into panic by reports of the swift advance of Mor-
gan's Confederate Raiders, who actually crossed the Ohio River
but did not reach as far north as Terre Haute. To fend off such
threats, the people organized a secret Loyalty League and a
home guard, which paraded through the streets and drilled on
the meadows outside of the town. Each day brought new dan-
gers and new triumphs; the times were exciting enough to stir
the imagination of any boy. Eugene was too young to puzzle
over the meaning of the conflict; it was an unknown monster
that seemed to spout glory and death with the same mouth. Not
until many years later did Debs see.& giant shining through the
gray fog of doubts and treachery:
History may be searched in vain for an example of noble
heroism and sublime self-sacrifice equal to that of Old John
Brown.
From the beginning of his career to its close he had but one
idea and one ideal, and that was to destroy chattel slavery; and
in that cause he sealed his devotion with his noble blood. Real-
izing that his work was done, he passed serenely, almost with
joy, from the scenes of men.
His calmness upon the gallows was awe-inspiring; his exalta-
tion supreme.
Had it not been for the determination of Daniel Debs, his
son might have spent the war years sitting around the store
listening to the tales of battle. But to Daniel's educated mind,
moving with ease among the French and German classics, edu-
cation was the sole piety, and he was greatly concerned about
the training of his children. The first public school in Terre
Haute, begun in 1858, suspended the next year for lack of funds;
the father had small faith in it when it reopened in 1860. Daniel,
whose grocery business flourished to the point where the family
moved to a larger house at Eleventh Street and Wabash Avenue,
ehose instead to send Eugene to the Old Seminary School, a
private institute on Sixth Street.
The boy, with a marvelous memory and a desire to learn,
quickly became bored with the endless repetition of lessons in
reading, writing, and ciphering, and decided that the best thing
about school was the candy store in the little frame shack down
the street. He greatly preferred Sunday evenings at home, when
Daniel acted as tutor. Gazing at the large busts of Voltaire and
Rousseau, Eugene quietly listened to passages from Racine,
Corneille, or the favorite, Hugo, and sometimes Goethe or
Schiller. Thus he learned both French and German, and slowly
absorbed the democratic traditions of Europe. He learned that
men had hungered for freedom, written about it, fought and
bled for it on a thousand dusky hills, long before the Civil War
in America.
But there was no danger of Eugene's becoming lost in the
past; the present was too imminent, too tawdry, too colorful.
Only two blocks away, lining Wabash Street just west of the
canal, was a double chain of saloons, whorehouses, cheap hotels.
Before men dared to sleep in the local boardinghouses they drew
a bolt across the door to their room. The shameless gambling,
cheating, and all-night carousing drew forth sermons from the
ministry, but not even the newspapers took such sermons seri-
ously. As one local paper pointed out, uTo live up to the rev-
erend gentleman's standard the whole business world would
have to be revolutionized."
It was so common for children to spend Sunday afternoon on
the streets that a nondenominational mission school was started
in the armory. The school's recruiting officer combed the town
for boys loitering or playing marbles, and brought them to the
services. Students at :first received picture cards for attendance,
an enticement that was hurriedly dropped when it was dis-
covered that several boys were gambling for the picture cards
by p i ~ h i n pennies.'
Eugene Debs, by spending Sunday at home, evaded both de-
linquency and mission school. Daniel was his usual companion;
his mother and the girls were too busy cooking and sewing. A
preference for classicism, which Daniel had learned from the
10
THE BENDING CROSS
French dramatists and Daisy from the Catholic re-
quired that all life be adorned with ritual. Countless hours
lavished on the chores of making clothing immaculate and meals
grandiose, and always through the confusion moved Daisy-
small, gentle, but complete master of each development. Sun-
day dinner was lifted into high ceremony, performed with gaiety
but after the prescribed fashion. The huge mirth and the fine
manner became for the structure of existence. until
nothing could be done without an added flourish. This was even
true of the hunting trips that he often took with DanieL Equip-
ment was always perfect when they marched off in quest of
mushrooms; good dogs and a flawless shotgun went with them
after snipe and prairie chickens. On these trips the boy learned
the names of animals and flowers, the best swimming places,
how thick the ice had to be before it was safe for skating. By
comparison, pitching pennies was dull and mission school highly
unpleasant.
Only once was Eugene inside a church, the day he ventured
into St. Joseph's Cathedral. Years later he remembered the
terrifying experience:
The priest delivered an address on Hell. 1 shall never forget
it as long as 1 live. He pictured a thousand demons and devils
with horns and bristling tails, clutching pitchforks steeped in
brimstone, and threatening to consume all who did not accept
the interpretation of Christianity as given by the priest. 1 left
that church with a rich and royal hatred of the priest as a per-
son, and a loathing for the church as an institution, and 1 vowed
that 1 would never go inside a church again.
Because Eugene Debs thought that the chlirch should preach
love like Christ, not fear like a hangman, the vow was kept. On
the flyleaf of a Bible which he received in 1868 as a prize in a
spelling contest, his teacher had written: ''Read and obey."
Debs later commented tersely: "I never did either."
The end of the Civil War, although it may have gratified
Daniel's ideals, gravely damaged his income. Trade fell off
sharply at the store. Soldiers returning from the front were un-
able to find jobs. Wages, which had lagged behind rising prices
throughout the war, dropped even farther. A business slump was
beginning, and there were now six children in the family. Daisy
had borne five more babies but only three had lived-Eugenie,
E:inma, and Theodore. Eugene, the only boy except for a year-
old baby, was forced to spend much of his time clerking in the
store. It was dull drudgery, for when you had learned that but-
ter was a dime a pound, spring chickens a dime each, string
beans a nickel a quart, you knew about all there was to know.
The boy leaned on the counter and listened wist.fully to the
trains passing two blocks away.
A hope for relief from boredom came when he transferred to
the public grammar school in 1867, and again when he began
high school in 1869. But both times. the hope proved vain; the
schools offered only more reading, more writing, more ciphering.
Even boyhood sports were lost to him because Daniel worked
long hours in the store and Daisy said that he was too big to
play marbles. One night Eugene accompanied his father to a
vaudeville show and yearned to become a song-and-dance DlaD,
but the fancy soon wore off.
) Always his thoughts kept returning to the men in blue denim
jackets and engineers' caps. The closing years of the decade, in
which freight engines crossed the continent to California, saw
four new railroads lay their ties into Terre Haute. The popula-
tion grew to sixteen thousand; by 1870 there were only three
larger cities in Indiana. And in that same year, when he was
fourteen years old, Eugene Debs quit high school. His parents
opposed this decision, but he was eager to take some responsi-
bility for feeding the large family, and he also still felt the lure
of the railroad. Even Daniel was forced to admit that his son
would never succeed in business-the boy's work at the store
had been marked by over-weights and liberal credit-so the
father agreed to ask a fellow Alsatian who worked in the paint-
shop of the Vandalia line if there were vacancies there. Just a
few months earlier the Vandalia shops had received their first
important additions since their construction in 1853. The old
enginehouse was now the erecting department; an enlarged
roundhouse, a car shed, paintshops, a boiler department. a
tinshop, a large planing mill, and a blacksmith shop were all
standing. Terre Haute now had a labor shortage in contrast to
THE BENDING CROSS
the unemployment of 1866, and it was possible for a boy to:6nd
work.
On May 23, 1870, Eugene Debs--lean, six feet tall, with
angular power-began cleaning grease from the trucks of freight
engines. Now at Jast he was a railroader, but the haze of glamor
grew thin at close range. The shops were cold and damp, the
hours long and monotonous; the potash which he used to loosen
the grease ate into his hands until they were raw and bled across
the knuckles. For fifty cents a day he was compelled to be a
whipping boy, take orders from everybody, stand for abuse and
profanity and constant goading by men who were themselves
goaded by other men. Two days' wages were spent to buy a
paint scraper, and that evening he carved his name on the blade,
up near the handle. He kept the tool until he died, a symbol of
labor at fifty cents a day. At dusk his aching muscle,s dragged
him home to a pallet stuffed with straw in the drafty attic which
he now shared with Theodore; the next morning stiff legs were
scarcely able to carry him back to the job. But he kept working
from a sense of duty, grim stamina, delight in the roaring loco-
motives, a joy at the pride in Daisy's eyes when he carried home
his weekly pay check, the vain bluster with which he paraded
in front of his admiring brother, Theodore. And then came pro-
motions. He was sent out with a crew to paint every switch on
the seventy miles of track between Terre Haute and Indianap-
olis. Later. he was permitted to paint simple stripes on car
bodies, and finally to make Jettering on locomotives.
For years Eugene Debs had been known as one of the most
likeable boys in Terre Haute. His manner was open-handed and
genuine in a way that demanded the same treatment. He did
small favors for the women in the community and helped their
husbands to repair buggy wheels or haul wood, but his generos-
ity was usually directed toward the younger children. His
pockets loaded with candy from his father's store, he passed it
out with both hands to everybody he met. Word got around that
he was an expert at making kites, and that he was eager to teach
people how to fly them. As soon as Theodore was old enough to
walk easily, the older brother taught him to ice-skate and to
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS IS
build rafts" took him for long tramps in the surrounding hills.
Eugene's glamorous tales about railroading may have been
prompted by a desire for personal recognition, but this possi-
bility did not lessen Theodore's gratitude. Theodore came to
have a blind, unqualified adoration of his older brother.
When Eugene began to paint signs for the railroad, his serv-
ices to the community acquired a much greater value. The
neighbors soon learned that Eugene Debs would paint a sign,
any kind of sign, and wouldn't charge a penny fbr his work.
This ability brought the young railroader added prestige, and
it also gave him deep pride in his craftsmanship. He painted
signs in black on large boards and then nailed on a wooden
border. Even if Debs had no stencils and drew the letters free-
hand, they were round and fair. This printing, easily recognized
as a professional job, was in strong contrast to Debs' writing,
which sprawled forceful and ugly across the page. The printing,
not the writing, was most typical of the man's viewpoint. Later
in life, he frequently announced that incompetence was the
best possible reason to fire a workman.
Eugene Debs' kindliness, which remained a dominant mo-
tive in his life, was rooted in his earliest memories. Daniel was
known as a stern and retiring man, an unyielding disciplinarian.
Even Daisy sometimes raised her hand in retribution against
the children. But punishment was rare, and came only when it
was deserved. Daniel Debs, who often seemed disagreeable to
the outside world, was deeply revered by his children, and the,
reverence for Daniel was matched by their worship of Daisy.
Although Daniel kept free of what he considered women's work
around the house, this immunity did not extend to his sons.
Eugene Debs spent so many hours helping Daisy in the kitchen
that he became an excellent cook, an avocation that he enjoyed
for the rest of his life. That enjoyment came partly from the
memories of his parents' home and the affection that prevailed
there. In 1899, Daisy and Daniel Debs celebrated their golden
wedding anniversary in 'rene Haute, with all their children
presen t, and Eugene Debs paid tribute to his parents: "1 can but
say in the name of my sisters and my brothers and those younger
THE BENDING CROSS
in the bonds of family to our father that we
tender him our warmest congratulations upon this rare occasion.
When we greet him our hearts are in our hands; when we kiss
his time-furrowed cheeks our hearts are on our lips, and when
we. congratulate him upon this, his golden wedding anniversary,
our hearts are in our Debs, however flowery his expres-
sion, was utterly sincere when he said on that occasion: "There
IJ,re two words in our language forever sacred to memory-
Mother and Home! Home. the heaven upon earth, and mother
its presiding angel."
However, other men ha ve loved their family and friends only
to show cold indifference to those alien to Debs'
moral strength came from his acceptance of responsibility for
the welfare of strangers, and the reason again lies in his child-
hood. The home of Daniel Debs contained two books that left
an enduring mark on his oldest son. Eugene automatically read
the works of Schiller, who applauded the deeds of generous
young men when they declared open warfare against all ugliness
and cruelty. "The Hostage," written by this great German
romanticist, remained Debs' favorite poem. Even more impor-
tant was Lea Miaerablea, Victor Hugo's story of Jean Valjean.
Valjean, completely brutalized by poverty, stole a loaf of bread
in order to feed his family, and was redeemed by the gentle
friendship of a girl and a priest. Lea Miserablea captured Debs'
emotions. He read it time after time throughout his life, and
each time he swore his allegiance to its central theme. He talked
about it constantly. He recommended it equally to his friends
and to casual acquaintances.
Just a week before Christmas, 1871, the young railroader was
forced to take a long step forward. On that night, while he was
painting stripes on a car, the engineer from the yard engine
snorted into the shop. The engineer's profane explosion ended
with the statement that his damIoolreman had been too drunk
to come to work, and that he needed somebody to shovel coal.
Then he noticed the tall boy with the jutting jaw and the shock
of thick brown hair. At that moment Eugene Debs, with his
consent or without it, became a fireman. For the first time he
climbed onto a switch engine as a member of its crew. For the
first time he knew the biting cold o:n one side and the fury of heat
on the other, knew the smell of snow blowing through an open
cab.
He was soon given a. job firing over the road from Terre Haute
to Indianapolis. His wages, which had been a dollar a night on
the switch engine. went even higher. He insisted on using the
extra money to go to business conege every afternoon, crowding
his sleep into a few morning hours. His mother felt grave concern
over the boy's health, but Eugene drove himself because he
knew no o t ~ r way to live. Daisy could understand that; for
aU of her gentle ways and slight stature, she was the same res-
olute woman who had launched the Debs' grocery.
, The young fireman continued to spend at home those rare
hours which were not needed for work, sleep. or school. The
Debs were such a close-knit family that they were called "clan-
nish" in a town sensitive to real or imagined snobbery. The
neighbors made other charges against Daniel. They said he was
grouchy, They could not understand his mushroom-hunting
and often remarked: "There goes that crazy Frenchman after
toadstools again." His position in the largely German com-
lDunity was made even more difficult in 1870 by the Franco-
Prussian War, which found Daniel an ardent advocate of the
French cause. But in 1871 Daniel gladly agreed to the marriage
of his oldest daughter Marie to John G. Heinl, a young German
immigrant who had come to Terre Haute a few years earlier
and had opened one of the first greenhouses in the town.
There were moments, during the years he worked on the rail-
road. when Eugene Debs thought he might have made a mistake
in leaving school. Eugene tried to study at home, but he found
it very difficult. His job took most of his time and energy, and
there were always chores to be donr. for his mother and for the
neighbors. He found it impossible to turn down any request for
help, and his reading in literature and railroad technology
seemed to move slowly.-It was small consolation to know that
the local schools taught only the most elementary of subjects;
Eugene Debs continued to mourn his own lack of knowledge,
build rafts" took him for long tramps in the surrounding hillS'.
Eugene's glamorous tales about railroading may have been
prompted by a desire for personal recognition, but this possi-
bility did not lessen Theodore's gratitude. Theodore came to
have a blind, unqualified adoration of his older brother.
When Eugene began to paint signs for the railroad, his serv-
ices to the community acquired a much greater value. The
neighbors soon learned that Eugene Debs would paint a sign,
any kind of sign, and wouldn't charge a penny for his work.
This ability brought the young railroader added prestige, and
it also gave him deep pride in his craftsmanship. He painted
signs in black on large boards and then nailed on a wooden
border. Even if Debs had no stencils and drew the letters free-
hand, they were round and fair. This printing, easily recognized
as a professional job, was in strong contrast to Debs' writing,
which sprawled forceful and ugly across the page. The printing,
not the writing, was most typical of the man's viewpoint. Later
in life, he frequently announced that incompetence was the
best possible reason to fire a workman.
Eugene Debs' kindliness, which remained a dominant mo-
tive in his life, waS rooted in his earliest memories. Daniel was
known as a stern and retiring man, an unyielding disciplinarian.
Even Daisy sometimes raised her hand in retribution against
the children. But punishment was rare, and came only when it
was deserved. Daniel Debs, who often seemed disagreeable to
the outside world, was deeply revered by his children, and the.
reverence for Daniel was matched by their worship of Daisy.
Although Daniel kept free of what he considered women's work
around the house, this immunity did not extend to his sons.
Eugene Debs spent so many hours helping Daisy in the kitchen
that he became an excellent cook, an avocation that he enjoyed
for the rest of his life. That enjoyment came partly from the
memories of his parents' home and the affection that prevailed
there. In 1899, Daisy and Daniel Debs celebrated their golden
wedding anniversary in Terre Haute, with all their children
present, and Eugene Debs paid tribute to his parents: "I can but
say in the name of my sisters and my brothers and those younger
16 THE BENDING CROSS
and he persuaded himself that this was due to his own action.
In the spring of 1873, when his class graduated from high school.
Debs lay on his bed and cried with anguish.
The following autumn he suffered an even greater blow. In
vestigation of the Credit Mobilier scandals by a Congressional
committee had revealed widespread fraud in railroad construc-
tion, fraud in which Congressmen pulled the strings and shared
the profits. Stockholders, panic-stricken by the danger to their
investments, dumped their securities recklessly onto the mar-
ket. Creditors clamored for their funds at railroad offices and
banks. The largest financial house in America, Jay Cooke &
Company, closed its doors on September 18; bankruptcy had
been caused by overinvestment in the Northern Pacific Rail-
road. The price of farm products fell rapidly, but every price
drop seemed to cause the piles of rotting corn and wheat to
grow. Wages were slashed to the starvation level, but every
wage cut seemed to throw more men out of work. The railroads
shut down almost completely, and Eugene Debs was laid off by
the Vandalia.
There were no railroad jobs in Terre Haute, and Debs rode
the freights over the Chicago and Eastern Illinois to Evansville:
Daisy had pleaded with him to stay at home, but Eugene had
insisted that he was a locomotive fireman and intended to find
work in his own trade. It was unpleasant to leave the security
and prestige that he had known in Terre Haute; it became even
more unpleasant when he was unable to find work in Evansville.
He was apprehensive as he caught a freight car for St. Louis, but
good luck came back to him, and there he was hired as a loco
motive fireman.
St. Louis was the largest citythat Debs had ever seen. It was
also the city of greatest unhappiness. The depression prostrated
the metropolitan workers. In a town-like Terre Haute, most men
owned their own homes and raised food in truck gardens, but
food and shelter were fearful worries to the workingmen of St.
Louis. Families were expelled from their homes and wandered
aimlessly through the streets. Men left their wives and children
behind them while they went elsewhere in search of work.
Clapboard shanties began to spring up along the mud flats of
climbed onto a switch engine as a member of its crew. For the
firsttime he knew the biting cold o:n one side and the fury of heat
On the other, knew the smell of snow blowing through an open
cab.
He was soon givena job firing over the road from Terre Haute
to Indianapolis. His wages, which had been a dollar a night on
the switch engine, went even higher. He insisted on using the
extra money to go to business college every afternoon, crowding
his sleep into a few morning hours. His mother felt grave concern
over the boy's health, but Eugene drove himself because he
knew no other way to live. Daisy could understand that; for
all of her gentle ways and slight stature. she was the same res-
olute woman who had launched the Debs' grocery.
I The young fireman continued to spend at home those rare
hours which were not needed for work, sleep, or school. The
Debs were such a close-knit family that they were called "clan-
nish
JJ
in a town sensitive to real or imagined snobbery. The
neighbors made other charges agajnst Daniel. They said he was
grouchy. They could not his mushroom-hunting
and often remarked: "There goes that crazy Frenchman after
toadstools again." His position in the largely German com ..
niunity was made even more difficult in 1870 by the Franco-
Prussian War, which found 1;>aniel an ardent advocate of the
French cause. But in 1871 Daniel gladly agreed to the marriage
of his oldest daughter Marie to John G. Heinl, a young German
immigrant who had Come to Terre Haute a few years earlier
s.nd had opened one of the first greenhouses in the town.
There were moments, during the years he worked on the rail-
road, when Eugene Debs thought he might have made a mistake
in leaving school. Eugene tried to study at home, but he found
it very difficull His job took most of his time and energy, and
there were always chores to he don( for his mother and for the
neighbors. He found it impossible to turn down any request for
help, and his reading in literature and railroad technology
seemed to move slowly. It was small consolation to know that
the local schools taught only the_ most elementary of SUbjects;
Eugene Debs continued to mourn his own lack of knowledge,
the Mississippi River. Small children played in the mud, rolled
in it, ate it. Eugene Debs saw these t h i n s ~ the plight of Jean
Valjean was not, after all, merely a horrible dream in Victor
Hugo's mind.
From these experiences Debs learned that his frustrations
were not personal cares to be cherished ,in lonely bitterness.
More than a dozen years passed before he began to understand
the events of 1878. Nearly thirty years passed before he ad-
vocated a remedy. But he could already have said, as he did
say later: "When 1 rise it will be with the ranks. and not from
the ranks." This identification with workingmen implied faith
in aU workingmen, a confidence that they would move forward
by virtue of their own courage and unity. Debs trusted these
people so fully because he knew them so well He had seen hun-
gry families divide their food with the neighbors. That was
enough for him.
The young fireman proved his basic soundness by his actions
in St. Louis. Even when thus uprooted from his home and nor-
mal routine, he kept his balance and continued his studies. He
read anything and everything, with no goal except a vague de-
sire for more knowledge. He soon became an amateur authority
on railroading. He remembered long sections oJ the French and
German classics all his life. His engineer, with whom he shared
a sleeping room during this period. would wake up, after the
two men had returned from a long trip and gone wearily to bed,
to find his roommate reading. He thought Debs quite consider,,:
ate to have shaded the candle, 'but he always snorted that the
young fireman was "a damn. fool." Debs merely laughed, agreed
that he probably was, and went ahead with his reading. Thirty
years later, the engineer had changed his mind: "I still believe
there was a damned fool in that room, but 1 know now that it
wasn't Debs."
Debs' railroad career was abruptly terminated in 1874. His
mother had been concerned for his safety since he first became a
fireman. Now that his lanky figure no longer tramped in her
kitchen each night, Daisy's concern had become panic, a jus-
tified feeling. Several railroads used unsafe equipment in order
to cut their operating costs. Worn rails, merely turned over
rather than replaced, broke under added strain. Defective
boilers often exploded, setting fire to the wooden coaches.
Faulty trestles collapsed<under passing trains. A poor coupling
system caused many railroaders to be smashed between cars.
Injuries and deaths among train crews were so common that the
newspapers paid little attention unless several passengers were
also killed.
Finally, in the autumn of 1874, one of Eugene's friends slipped
under a locomotive and was killed. That proved too much for
Daisy, who wrote a letter to her son pleading with him to come
home. The boy was confused and perplexed by his mother's
anxiety. Daisy often commented about Eugene: "He listens to
me attentively and respectfully-but has his own way." In this
case, however, his affection for his mother proved dominant
He returned to Terre Haute and became a billing clerk at Hul-
man & Cox, the largest wholesale grocery in the Mid-

[ 4 ]
WHEN EUGENE DEBS left his job on the railroad, two main in..,
fluences had shaped his nineteen-year-old mind: the humani-
tarianism of his family and the turbulent brutality of his frontier
world. Saturated in Daniel's idealism, he had accepted the need
for reflection, the belief in learning, the respect for human free-
dom and dignity. Debs' boyhood had spanned the Civil War
and two depressions, catastrophes which had smashed all bar-
riers between himself and his neighbors. He had heard about
battle, known widows and orphans, seen crippled men stand
alone on street corners. He had seen the unemployed shambling
through the streets of St. Louis, and their children playing in the
mud flats of the Mississippi River. Without knowing it, he had
sunk his feet deep in the soil of the American Midwest.
Eugene Debs came to magnify the Midwestern virtues and
to minimize the Midwestern faults. but even the faults he
shared with others became a source of strength. Debs' influence
with men and women was based on his similarity to them. He
was able to understand their common mind because it was, in
many ways, so e ~ t l y his mind. His generosity sometimes be-
came mawkishness. His literary sense found satisfaction in both
Goethe and ordinary doggerel. His delight in humor did not
scruple at repeating Negro dialect jokes. He drank hard liquor
because his fellows drank hard liquor. In his entire life, he never
made an important decision on the basis of theoretical study.
The facts of his own life kicked him into every step; often he
required more than one kick. These faults, binding Eugene
Debs to the men he knew and worked with, could scarcely be
distinguished from his virtues.
Debs' mind often returned to the events of his early life.
Although he had worked on the railroad less than five years, he'
had discovered the foundation for his entire career. "As a loco-
motive :fireman," Debs wrote, "I learned of the hardships of the
rail in snow, sleet and hil, of the ceaseless danger that lurks
along the iron highway, the uncertainty of employment, scant
wages and altogether trying lot of the workingman, so that from
my very boyhood I was made to feel the wrongs of labor ... "
CHAPTER J
[ 1 1
H
ERMAN ffiJLMAN was glad to hire the son of his
customer and good friend Daniel Debs. Hulman had
been only twenty-two years old when he came to
Terre Haute from Germany in 1854, and, with little capital, he
had started '8. grocery store, then a wholesale grocery business.
Next he installed a spice mill, and later he began roasting coffee.
He worked hard, reinvested his profits, dabbled in real estate,
kept his eye on the precious dollars. By 1874 his warehouse at
Fifth Street and Wabash held one of the best concerns in the
Midwest. Hulman thought he saw in Eugene Debs the same
qualities which underlay his own success. Debs was honest and
industrious, had modest needs. The boy's gaiety and kindness
were so spontaneous that he would never be a trouble maker
among the other employees.
Eugene Debs became a billing clerk. Every day tons of car-
tons, sacks, and bales moved through the warehouse. all cloaked
in the heady odor of spices and dust. Debs had to keep track of
every pound of it: The days became numbered boxes, one after
another. He counted bags of coffee and made notations, then
entered the notations in a ledger until his head ached. He hated
the work. One afternoon Herman Hulman came to visit Daniel,
and talked for hours about the limitless chances for a young
man in the grocery business. But Eugene Debs was not im-
pressed.
"There are too many things in business that I cannot toler-
ate," Debs wrote. "Business means grabbing for yourself." This
attitude had already begun to take shape in 1874, but there were
few outward signs. In his work he was efficient and cheerful,
and he was soon on intimate terms with Herman Hulman, with
the chief bookkeeper, Theodore Markle, and with the other em-
ployees. Deb$ smiled, joked, told stories, and did his job, but
20
the grocery house failed to enlist all of his abilities. His evenings
and week ends were free of respOnsibilities; he used them to keep
in touch with his old friends on the railroads.
He often walked down to the tracks in the evening to watch
the engines back and switch; to see the repairmen fix broken
couplings and the firemen throw wood into the roaring flames.
The lanky figure of the billing clerk was often found in the
saloons near the station, hunched over the bar to hear yarns that
came from a dozen states. There one evening Debs heard that
Joshua Leach, the Grand Master of the Brotherhood of Loco-
motive Firemen, was coming to Terre Haute to organize a
union. Debs, although he knew nothing about unions, decided
to go.
At the meeting, Leach told about the purposes of his organiza-
tion, explaining that it tried to offer cheap inSurance and a fra-
ternal spirit to men who needed both. Debs felt drawn to Leach's
"rugged honesty, simple manner, and homely speech." He
leaned forward eagerly to hear this vivid plan. It brought to life
a vision of :firemen joining hands in a common cause. Here was
the spirit of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Frater-
nity. When the meeting ended, Debs went up to the front of the
hall and asked to join Vigo Lodge.
Leach looked with surprise at this well-dressed youth who
confessed that he no longer worked on a railroad. But he could
not afford to be discriminating; in nearly two years of constant
effort, he had organized only thirty-one lodges and six hundred
members. He asked only one question: "If I admit you, do you
think you can do your duty?" Debs had no precise idea what
his duty would be, so he said simply, "Yes sir." Then he felt
a hand slap his shoulder and heard a voice say, "My boy, you're
a little young, but I believe you're in earnest and will make your
mark in the Brotherhood."
His initiation into Vigo Lodge represented a continuation and
a new beginning for Eugene Debs. Through his veins had flowed
the needs and hopes of his ancestors, his family, his friends on
the railroads, to find expression in the beliefs of his father. But
Daniel's sentimental faith in human brotherhood had been a
mere ideal; with Eugene it was to become a way of living. Yet
THE .BENDING CROSS
Debs joined Vigo Lodge for reasons that he could not have ex-
plained. The principal one, perhaps, was simply that he was an
energetic young man who loved railroading and hated the gr0-
cery business.
RailrOad expansion and combination, during the 1850's had
changed the local companies into nation-wide giants. The former
paternalism became less common; wages were cut; the working
day was lengthened. The first railroad craft to revolt against
these changes was the most skilled, the locomotive engineers,
who organized a Brotherhood in 186ft But strikes on the Chi-
cago & Galena and on the l\fichigan Southern were broken by
the combined power of the railioads, and the engineers decided
to retreat. In 1867 they accepted a new theory: If we improve
the efficiency of our members, the railroads will recognize our
value and voluntarily increase wages. The only remaining in-
centives to join the Brotherhood were cheap insurance and the
satisfaction of membership in a rather snobbish society. This
same pattern was accepted by the Order of Railway Conduc-
tors, founded in 1868, and by the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Firemen.
It was a pattern that suited Eugene Debs. Be well knew the
need of the firemen for cheap life insurance; the high accident
rate on the railroads had forced his own retirement. The wages
of firemen did not'permit them to pay the premiums .charged
by private companies; so, if they were, injured or killed, their
families were forced to rely on charity. The sole escape from this
impoverishment rested in a co-operative insurance order of the
workers themselves, and ,the BLF, together with the other two
aimed to meet this need.
Debs was elected first secretary of Vigo Lodge No. 16, a post
that brought him into the closest touch with its affairs. Be went
to every meeting in order to keep the. minutes, and often heard
bitter protests against the low wages and speed-up conditions
on the roads. This had little meaning for a man who spent his
working day in a gray suit and stiff collar, solemnly entering
figures and making out bills under the lax of Bul-
man, more friend than employer. Firemen in the saloons sul-
lenly muttered against the arrogance of their bosses, and Debs
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS !l3
said nothing. All day he worked behind a desk at Hulman's;
in the evening he worked behind a desk at home. He really
understood only o ~ thing about the BLF-its insurance sys-
tem. Letters by the score went out from Debs to lodges all over
the country, inquiries about accidents, descriptions of wrecks,
claims for benefits. Each one. began "Dear Brother" and ended
"Fraternally yours."
The Order was so small that Leach knew every member. and
he noticed the boundless activity of the secretary of Vigo Lodge.
Soon he was boasting about Debs to a meeting in St. Louis: "I
put a tow-headed boy in the brotherhood at Terre Haute not
long ago, and some day he will be at the head of it." Leach was
right; it was the kind of order in which a billing clerk would rise
quickly, but most of the other members were dropping out. The
firemen were not interested in insurance; they could not even
afford to pay the premiums. They wanted an organization that
would stop the wrecks, raise their wages, shorten their hours,
take the boss off their necks. The BLF was concerned with one
thing; the workers were concerned with quite different objec-
tives. Debs watched in despair as the national membership fell
rapidly. Several times he was the only person present at meet-
ings of Vigo Lodge. He sat quietly until it was time to adjourn;
then picked up his minute book and went home. Two weeks
later he was back in the hall, waiting again.
It is difficult to say precisely why Debs did not desert the
dying organization. His devotion was partly due to his belief in
the purposes of the BLF. partly to mere obstinacy, partly to
the absence of an alternative outlet for his energy. Although
he was often discouraged. he continued his desperate efforts to
rebuild Vigo Lodge. But he ha;d not yet found the key to suc-
cess.
When the railroad workers revolted against their conditions
in July, 1877, the BLF was a bystander. Both the Pennsyl-
vania and the Baltimore & Ohio had posted notices of wage
cuts. The workers decided that the companies could go to hell.
Engineers and firemen stepped down from their cabs. In West
Virginia. Maryland, and Pennsylvania, crowds of strikers
blocked the tracks to keep scabs from running the trains.
THE BENDING CROSS
Pinkerton detectives and militia began to move against
the strikers. President Hayes sent Federal troops into West
Virginia and Maryland in response to appeals from the gov-
ernors. The revolt spread to Pittsburgh, where an enraged mob
burned several Pennsylvania shops, a hundred lOComotives,
and five hundred freight cars. The local militia refused to fire
on the rioters, but soldiers imported from Philadelphia killed
twenty-six unarmed persons. The Locomotive Engineers and
the Order of Railway Conductors furnished strikebreakers to
the railroads. The strikers, thus faced by the railroads. state
militia, Pinkertons, Federal troops, and hostile unions, were
overwhelmed. More than a hundred workers were killed and
several hundred others wounded. Two weeks after the strike
began, railroaders were pleading for their old jobs. But the
blacklist was still in good condition; the railroads were again
cleared of the aggressive union men.
These developments confused and stunned Eugene Debs.
The Locmnotive Firemen', Magazine,* official journal of the
BLF, charged that the railroads' "system of oppression" had
cansed the walkout. Although Debs, now a national officer of
the order, agreed with The Magazine, he was more concerned
about the that accompanied the strike. In a speech to
the BLF national convention in Indianapolis soon after the end
of the disturbances, Debs declared:
This continual reduction of the price of labor was the direct
cause of the recent strikes which terrified the entire nation. A
strike at the present time signifies anarchy and revolution, and
the one of but a few days ago will never be blotted from the
records of memory. The question has often been asked, Does
the brotherhood encourage strikers? To this question we must
emphatically answer, No, brothers. To disregard the laws which
govern our land? To destroy the last vestige of order? To stain
our hands with the crimson blood of ourfellow beings? We again
say, No, a thousand times No!
For this flaming bit of oratory, Debs was congratulated by
Riley McKeen, his personal friend and the president of the
Vandalia Railroad. Surely the young delegate deserved praise, if
* Hereafter called The Magcm,ne.
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS U
not for the viewpoint he expressed, at least for the diligence
with which he had studied public speaking.
[ 2 ]
DEBS' ATTEMPTS to educate himself were one of the ruling
threads in his life. His first wages from Hulman's were used to
buy Appleton's Encyclopedia. For months he pondered over
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, a gift from Daniel He be-
gan to squander his money on books, buying his first dictionary
and a five-year subscription to Horace Greeley's New York
Tribune ..
From Appleton's Encyclopedia Debs gained his first knowl-
edge of American history. It was natural that the Revolution
of 1776 should be his main interest. From Daniel he had learned
the history of France, including the part that his own ancestors
had played during the uprising there in 1789. The stirring tale
of conflict between the thirteen colonies and the mother coun-
try furnished Eugene Debs with two new heroes, Thomas
Paine and Patrick Henry. "The revolutionary history of the
United States and France stirred me deeply and its heroes and
martyrs became my idols," he wrote. "Thomas Paine towered
above them all. A thousand times since then I have found in-
spiration and strength in the stirring words, 'These are the
times that try men's souls I' "
Never content to keep his knowledge as a personal trinket,
Debs now helped to found the Occidental Literary Club, a
weekly debating society. When his turn came to speak, Debs
chose to give Patrick Henry's famous oration. It roused him as
both philosophy and rhetoric; he was certain that it would also
rouse an audience. Struggling into his black suit. stifi collar,
and flowing tie, Debs gaily rehearsed his speech to himself.
The sight of the crowded hall made him even more jubilant.
Theodore was there, frankly proud of his big brother. Daisy
and Daniel had come, expecting the best. Every seat was filled;
people were standing at the sides and back.
But the time for the meeting arrived. and the other scheduled
speaker did not. The realization that he would have to give the
THE BENDING CROSS
entire program proved disastrous for Debs. As he rose to speak,
the faces in the audience seemed like the faces of hostile wit-
nesses. Sweat ran down his stomach, his hands were cold He
forgot his lines, lost his voice, muffed his climax-it was dismal. .
When he had gasped, "I know not what course others may take;
but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" he bolted
through the door and walked home through alleys so that he
would not have to face his friends.
One disgrace was enough, thought Debs, and a multitude of
did not wipe out his shame. He could have for-
sworn oratory completely, but that solution he swiftly rejected.
He began to practice at home, reciting to his family, rehearsing
gestures before a mirror, polishing, drilling, perfecting. From
French literature he had learned meter and climax; from con-
stant effort he learned poise and platform technique. Grad-
ually the tenseness passed, and that autumn he gave the key-
note speech at the BLF convention in Indianapolis.
Early in 1878 the Occidental Literary Club decided to sponsor
several lectures by prominent men. Robert G. Ingersoll, who
had written the article that had awakened Debs' interest in
Tom Paine, wrurchosen to begin the series. Ingersoll, powerful,
handsome, magnificent of voice, was nearing the height of his
reputation as an orator. A brilliant speech at the Republican
convention of 1876 had placed his name in the headlines, and
his attacks on religious dogma had kept it there. Ingersoll's
manager merely repeated the public estimate in his advice to
Debs: "Boldly announce him as the greatest orator in the
world. He is."
When Debs met his guest at the Terre Haute station, he was
captured by Ingersoll's humanitarianism, and later that evening
he was overwhelnied by the elaborate form of the lecture on
''The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child." Every sentence was
in rhythm; every line contained the right number of prose feet.
The speech was studded with quotations and climaxed by a
glittering peroration. The clamorous applause of that night's
audience persuaded the Club to bring Ingersoll back a few
months later to lecture about Robert Burns. An autumn down-
pour on the crucial night raised the threat of a small crowd and
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS 'l.7
financial loss, but Ingersoll offered: "Boys, don't worry in the
least. If the rain keeps ~ p l away I will charge you nothing
for the lecture and pay my own expenses." As Debs, Ingersoll,
and Daniel Voorhees, still Congressman from Terre Haute,
boarded the streetcar for the Opera House, Voorhees predicted
that there was no need to worry: "Colonel IngerSoll is the only
man in America who can draw against the elements and fill the
biggest house on the rainiest night." That prediction proved
right-the hall was again jammed with wildly cheering specta-
tors.
But the speaker's most avid admirer was Eugene Debs. Debs
was so entranced that he walked to the station with Ingersoll
Even then he could not break away. He rode all the way to
Cincinnati before he could force himself to return home.
Ingersoll's indictment of religion was soon followed by Wen-
dell Phillips' scathing attack on monopoly power, growing so
rapidly since the Civil War. Like Ingersoll, Phillips was too
prominent to boycott; but Terre Haute revolted against an
invitation to Susan B. Anthony, who shockingly advocated
votes for women. Although the Occidental Club refused to
sponsor Miss Anthony, Debs would not drop the project. He
rented a hall himself, met the speaker at the station and es-
corted her to a hotel. As they walked down the street through
the jeers and hostile glances of the townspeople, Miss Anthony
bore herself with dignity and courage. "It would not have re-
quired any great amount of egging on;' Debs later wrote, "to
have excited the people to drive her from the. community.
Even my friends were disgusted with me for piloting such an
'undesirable citizen' into the community." The Terre Haute
EXpre88 did not approve of woman suffrage, but it admitted
that "Miss Anthony's lecture waS .. replete With well-stated
facts in support of her arguments'" And the meeting, although
a failure, was beneficial to Debs. His role in the affair earned
him the friendship of Mrs. Ida H. Harper. a neighbor and pio-
neer feminist. Also his first intimate contact with prejudice
merely steeled Debs' belief that women were entitled to "any
right or opportunity that man enjoyed."
Another. experience emphasized the herd instinct in Terre
THE BENDING CROSS
Haute. One evening Debs read in the newspaper an anonymous
sketch of Hoosier childhood that captured his imagination.
This sketch seemed so true to his own boyhood that he was in-
stantly attracted to its author. When inquiries revealed that
it had been written by James Whitcomb Riley, an unknown
poet on the Indianapolis Jaumal, Debs caught a train to In-
dianapolis. Riley was in another city giving one of his dialect
monologues, and Debs contented himself with scheduling an
early performance in Tette Haute. Three times the Occidental
Literary Club sponsored appearances by Riley, and each meet-
ing was a failure. Although Debs was very fond of Riley's im-
personations of the homespun farmer and the dandified school-
master teaching a country class, he seemed alone in his opinion.
Then the well-known humorist Bill Nye invited Riley to give
his act before an audience of celebrities at the Academy of Music
in New York City. Literally overnight the Hoosier poet became
a featured attraction. The next time he visited Terre Haute,
the auditorium there was completely filled at a dollar a person.
The entrance to the hall was littered with articles of wearing
apparel that had been torn off and lost in the scramble .. to get
inside.
[ 3 )
THE DEPBE88ION OF 1873 caused a powerful ground swell in the
political reform movement. Farmers were trapped between the
falling prices for their products and the combination of high
mortgage rates, excessive prices for farm JIUlChinery, and ex-
tortionate rates set by the new railroad monopolies. Severe de-
flation created a demand for paper money and lent new frenzy
to the Greenback movement. The working people, seeing their
trade unions smashed by the gigantic power of the employers,
also sought some relief through political channels.
Debs inevitably was captured by this flood. When he mounted
the platform on August 30, 1878, for his first political speech,
it was to champion the cause of the poor, the p p ~ the
cruci1ied, and the Democratic party. His youth was offset by
his eloquence and his prestige with the workingmen. Almost
immediately the local Democratic leaders offered him the
ination for Congress. Unwillingness to leave bis family and the
Brotherhood prompted Debs to decline. But the next year he
was the Democratic nominee for City Clerk in Terre Haute,
and easily won by an 1,100 majority. The entire Democratic
slate was swept into office, including Ida Harper's husband Tom
as the new City Attorney.
Debs, a naIve reformer, and Harper, a cynical one, were soon
the centers of a vigorous battle. Terre Haute was then one of the
most vice-ridden cities in America; the entire West End, color-
fully known as the Tenderloin, was a sinful wilderness of
mills and whorehouses. A principal task of the City Clerk was to
collect the fines levied against prostitutes who were picked up
on the streets, but Debs refused to be strict with women who
already had enough worries. He was told that it was his duty.
He still refused, and Tom Harper supported him.
The failure of the police to bring in the pimps and vice-kings
merely strengthened Harper's contempt for
officers. Some years later, a popular policeman died suddenly
and his friends decided to raise a fund for a large funeral Harper,
who gave freely to any cause, was approached for a
tion. When he heard the purpose of the fund, Harper was
lighted to comply: ''Did you say you want a dollar to help bury
a policeman? Well, here are five-bury that many while you are
at it."
In 1881 Debs ran for His job as City Clerk made
him the trusted associate of politicians, businessmen, labor
leaders; it was clearly preferable to working as a billing clerk at
Hu]man's. Two years earlier he had been pushed into office; he
now was forced to fight for his job. He fought well. Although the
Democratic ticket went down to defeat, Debs and one other
member were kept in office. Debs received two more votes than
in 1879.
His success was partly due to the political sagacity of Tom
Harper, public support by Riley McKeen, president of the
Vandalia Railroad and a prominent banker, and editorial tub-
thumping by Colonel O. J. Smith of the Gazette. But the main
cause was simply that men liked him. Debs knew every voter
80
THE BENDING CROSS
in town and called each one by his first name. He played with
their children and carried groceries home for their wives. His
leniency toward the prostitutes convinced some men that he was
a dangerous idiot, but it persuaded many that he was a kindly
saint. Debs often greeted his friends by kissing them on each
cheek; the few people who did not like him still received a smile
and a kind word. Men found it hard to vote against a person
who ignored their rudeness and offered them friendship in re-
turn.
Even after his election as City Clerk, Debs worked each night
on his duties in the Brotherhood. In 1878 he had been named as-
sistant editor of The Magazine; and the editorial work, the ad-
vertising, and much of the copy depended on his efforts. Each
dawn heralded sixteen hours of fierce, unrelenting toil at the
City Hall and a t home. When the Occidental Literary Club held
a debate on the topic. "nard Work versus Genius," Debs un-
hesitatingly championed "Hard Work" and was persuasive
enough to convince the judges that "genius is a nonentity."
Then, early in 1880, Debs was given even heavier duties in
the Brotherhood. The man who had been editor of The Magazine
and secretary-treasurer of the order was expelled for drunken':'
ness, and Grand Master Frank Arnold asked Debs to take both
jobs. Debs refused. Three times Arnold and Grand Instructor
Sam Stevens went to Debs and asked him to change his mind.
Debs just didn't see how he could do it. He had a good chance
for political advancement-Congress looked like the next step.
He'd be a fool to give up his career to work for the bankrupt
Brotherhood, which had only sixty lodges and a debt of six
thousand dollars.
Probably the outcome of these discussions was decided as
soon as S. M. Stevens said to Debs, ''You can save the brother-
hood." After the great strike of 1877, Debs had tried to save
Vigo Lodge because of his belief in its purposes. Now he had an
added reason. A portion of his life was bound up with the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. To acknowledge defeat
would be to acknowledge error, to admit that railroad workers
did not need an organization. Debs couldnot do that. Having
made many sacrifices, he was prompted to make even more and
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS 81'
greater ones. So the BLF moved its national offices to Terre
Haute, and Eugene Debs became the new secretary-treasurer
and editor of The Magazine.
Debs' faith in the righteowmess of his own decisions was a
main source of his strength. He seldom hesitated to ask others
to follow the road that he had chosen. Many persons agreed.
more from faith in the spokesman than from faith in the cause.
Debs now involved both family and friends in the task of reviv-
ing the Brotherhood. Theodore, his young brother, gave up a
partnership in a local haberdashery to become the BLF book-
keeper at a salary of ten dollars a week Emma Debs resigned
a seventy-five-dollar a month job teaching school, and she and
Eugenie became unpaid stenographers. Tom Harper became
adviser, attorney, and theoretician of the revamped organiza ....
tion. A Woman's Department was established in The Magar4'ine
and turned over to Ida Harper, with instructions to get the rail-
roaders' wives interested in the Brotherhood.
Several debts demanded immediate attention. A thousand
. dollars was needed to pay benefit claims to injured members.
The firm that printed The Magazine held over-due bills for
eighteen hundred dollars. Back salaries were due to all of the
officers. When Debs took office, the Brotherhood's safe held
$98.90 cash, a bank draft for twenty dollars, and $183.60 in
postal money orders. But within a week, stopgap measures had
been found. Debs gave his personal note to secure the debt to
the printing firm and paid the insurance claims from his own
pocket. All the officers and employees agreed that no salaries
should be paid until the crisis had passed. As a final step, Debs
persuaded several Terre Haute businessmen, including his
father and Riley McKeen, to guarantee the Brotherhood's
credit by posting a bond.
It seemed possible that all of these efforts would be wasted.
When the national convention met in September, 1880, most of
the delegates wanted to give up the struggle. But Eugene Debs
had hypnotized himself into the belief that victory was certain.
He went from room to room in: the hotel where the delegates
were staying, pleading with them to stick it out, promising that
the Brotherhood would be a solvent organization within a year ..
51!
THE BENDING CROSS
Man after man swung over to his side. They all knew that Gene
Debs would give them the shirt off his back-he had done just
that too often to leave room for dispute. When he wrapped his
long arm around a man's shoulder and started to laugh, it
wasn't likely that the man would say No. During the entire
convention, not a single delegate moved to dissolve the BLF.
Debs had won a year's grace. Now he had to make good his
promises.
After the convention, Debs went back to his job as City Clerk
of Terre Haute. The chief problem now was increasing the mem-
bership, and that was in the hands ci S. M. Stevens and Frank
Arnold. Debs made a few organizing trips around Indiana on
weekends, but most of his leisure time was spent working on cor-
respondence and the bene:6.t claims. It was maddening to be tied
down at the City Hall while his associates were :fighting the good
fight, but he was heartened by the knowledge that Stevens and
Arnold were showing results. The membership rolls began to
lengthen; dues payments began to incre!tSe. And in the Brother-
hood's office in Terre Haute, Eugene Debs slouched in an arm-
chair, laughed until the walls rocked and said that he thought
they'd survive. Theodore, still only seventeen years old. grinned
boyishly and buckled into his bookkeeping with renewed vigor.
While the BLF officers were desperately trying to save the
Order, several railroad executives were planning new ways to
destroy it. The 1877 strike had practically wiped out the rail-
road unions, and to finish the job the blacklist was revived.
yellow-dog contracts became common. Mere suspicion of union
membership was reason for discharge. Brotherhood officials
who had formerly been giyen free passage over the railroads
found this privilege was now revoked. Each day brought some
new insult, and always Debs struck back with heedless fury.
One morning a minor BLF official came to Terre Haute, com-
plaining that he had been thrown out of the office of a vice-
president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Debs picked up his hat,
. took a firm grip on the recent victim, and caught the next freight
for Columbus and the offices of the Pennsylvania. When the
. two unionists walked into the vice-president's office, the execu-
tive set matters straight to start with: "Before we go any
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS 8S
further, I want you to know, Debs, that I don't give a God damn
for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen." The answer was
equally blunt: "And I want you to know that I don't give a
God damn for the Pennsylvania Railroad. I'm not here to get
your opinion. rm here to get courteous treatment for our
officials:'
They were both big men, accustomed to shouting above the
noise of a locomotive cab. Debs' astonished companion later
said, "When they got going good you could hear them clear
across Franklin County:' The argument lasted for an hour,
profane, bellicose, unyielding, abusive. Finally the executive
paUsed, grinned, and offered Debs a job with the railroad. All
he got was a curt refusal. Openly admiring, he next offered an
annual pass on the Pennsylvania. Debs refused that also, but
took a trip pass to get back to Terre Haute. He had his own
ideas about gifts from corporation executives to union officials.
For a few months the union officials had little trouble with the
Pennsylvania, but this incident had a more important result.
All the way across the great plains, from the Alleghenies to the
Rocky Mountains, men told how Debs had stood up to the vice-
president. The story was repeated around the freight yards,
above . the clamor in the roundhouse, over beer in a thousand
junction towns. Its hard-bitten dignity touched a dream that
ran deep in men on the frontier. Debs' vigor and personal reputa-
tion began to draw men into the Brotherhood; Arnold and
Stevens were working frantically; the temper of the railroaders
was beginDing to turn toward organization and resistance. By
1881 the membership had doubled; the next year it doubled
again to reach five thousand. The debt had been wiped out.
The Magazine was now read far beyond the ranks of the BLF.
Debs' contribution to this growth brought him new prestige;
the union's 1882 convention at Terre Haute was largely a trib-
ute to his efforts. When other men had wavered, he had stood
firm as a rock. He had brought to the labor movement a de-
termination and concentrated force which astonished his fellow
officers. He worked with an urgency that affected his colleagues,
and even his mother. Often Daisy went to her son's room long
after midnight and found him asleep over a half-written letter.
THE BENDING CROSS
With silent reproach, she turned out the lamp and left hiui
slumped across the desk. The next morning he usually began
working again before he had even finished breakfast. The prob-
lems of the firemen were Debs' whole life--yellow-dog contracts,
the blacklist,. poverty, accidents, corporate arrogance and cor-
porate greed.
But Debs was still certain that labor disputes could be solved
by reason and compromise. At the 1880 convention he told the
delegates:
In times gone by, laboring men who had been imposed on.
formed themselves into a mob and with a recklessness that
makes us shudder, began to burn and plunder the property of
the corporations they were working for. . . .
While we always sympathized with these deluded and miser-
able wretches, we have always felt that they were wrong in
acting so violently. There is a different way of settling difficul-
ties between employer and employee. Our organization believes
in arbitration. . .
Two years later, he took editorial notice of the fact that Wil-
liam H. Vanderbilt, "the great railroad president," had en-
dorsed 'the principles of the BLF. "Not only have we met with
these encouraging words from Mr. Vanderbilt," said the edi-
torial, "but many otber railroad officials have stood by us and
given kindly words of sympathy."
Such statements quickly earned Debs recognition as a lead-
ing spokesman for conservative policies. His union had long
been clasped to the bosom of the railroad corporations; he was
now trying to snuggle closer.
CHAPTER 3
[ 1 1
E
UGENE DEBS would make a good husband. Terre
Haute women with daughters of marrying age in 1882
aU thought so, and their daughters sighed agreement.
Dozens of young ladies gazed covetously after the handsome
City Clerk as he glad-handed his way through the streets and
public buildings. With his personal charm, Debs had prestige.
At the age of twenty-six years, he was nationally known as a
leader of the respectable Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen,
and he was powerful in local politics. He was even said to admit
privately that he wanted to be President-no impossibility for a
vigorous and eloquent young man. Debs filled every requirement
of the eligible bachelor.
The resultant web of jealousy and intrigue always enCOlm-
tered the same obstacle-Debs. He had never been known to
pay much attention to any girl. When he went for long tramps
through the woods on bright spring mornings, Theodore
tramped by his side. His social life consisted of occasional drink-
ing sprees which carned him through every saloon in town, ac-
companied by his railroad friends or by Jamey Riley. He was
never seen at dances or parties. With girls he was polite and
cordial, never more than that. The local maidens began to
think that there was little hope, and gradually the hunt turned
to less desirable but more responsive game.
But Kate Metzel was long on staying power. Born twenty-
:five years earlier in Louisville, she knew poverty and hard work.
Her father had died when she was a child, leaving a penniless
wife to care for Kate and an older brother, Dan. After a des-
perate struggle to support her two children, the mother married
John Jacob Baur, a widower with four children, and the family
moved to Terre Haute. where four more children were born to
the middle-aged couple. Baur, a shrewd, industrious Swiss im-
35
86.
THE BENDING CROSS
migrant, measured success sOlely in dollars; by 1880 his drug-
store at Seventh and Wabash Avenue was the largest in town.
He sent all of his sons to college or to Europe, but, in accordance
with the tradition of both Switzerland and Indiana, his daugh-
ters were denied these advantages. Kate was tied to a daily
routine of housework, caring for the younger children, washing
and ironing dozens of shirts a.nd collars for her brothers who
went to college or worked in the store. The neighbors often saw
her at night through the open windows, tall, proud, reserved,
still busy with the chores. Her normal wishes for excitement and
prestige, striking the barrier of reality, were exaggerated into
abnormal ambition. Her hunger for jewelry and fine clothes was
soon exceeded by her hunger for social standing.
Marie Heinl, Debs' oldest sister, was one of the few close
friends of this singular girl She, like Kate, knew the ruling
ha.nd of pride and dignity. At Marie's home, Kate Metzel ofren
met Eugene Debs. Soon Kate became a regular visitor at the
home of Daisy and Da.niel, and the neighbors began to say that
she was a wen-planned campaign. Certainly she was
attracted to the gentle young City Clerk, who was able to un-
derstand the ways in which drudgery can disfigure dreams.
Debs, for his part, might have seen in Kate Metzel the qualifi-
cations that his wife would need. Kate lacked the charm and
kindliness that marked Eugene; she was ambitious and even
self-centered; but she also had great strength within herself.
She would never interfere with a man's decisions or try to con-
trol his life. She too recognized that Eugene Debs "has his
own way," and that he alone would make the important de-
cisions in his life.
Neither Kate nor Debs had the necessary temperament for a
whirlwind romance. She often contrived to stay at the Debs'
home until late at night, so that the chivalrous Eugene would
feel obliged to take her home. Kate walked solemnly along at
Eugene's side, listening to his personal plans, his plans for the
welfare of workingmen. Although she failed to grasp many of
his ideas, she was. captivated by the fervor of his words. By
May of 1882, Debs was definitely a suitor, but a very unor-
thodox one; as a present he gave Kate a bound volume of The
Magazine.
[ 1: ]
EUGENE DEBS, in spite of his office in the BLF, was still un-
aware of the breadth of the labor movement. A business re-
vival in 1880 had given new strength to the trade unions. The
Knights of Labor, whose organizers had moved mysteriously
through the railroad strikes of 1877, had now emerged from
secrecy and was growing into a large movement. But the K of L
was a reform organization rather than a trade union, admitting
farmers, employers, everybody except lawyers a.nd saloon-
keepers. The trade unionists felt the need for a federation con-
cerned solely with the welfare of the wage-workers; during the
summer of 1881, nine men met in Terre Haute to discuss the
formation of a national order of workingmen. Unable to take
decisive action, they issued a call for a general conference in
Pittsburgh that autumn.
The Federated Trades and Labor Council, which soon be-
came the American Federation of Labor, was founded at the
Pittsburgh meeting. The structure of the new federation was
shaped in large measure by the ideas of Samuel Gompei's.
Only thirty-one yea.rs old, Gompers was already the chieftain
of the New York cigarmakers. With severe handicaps-he was
short, incredibly ugly, and a Jewish immigrant from the ghetto
of London-he had become a leader by virtue of an iron will and
a passionate belief in the labor movement. He had once been
friendly with the radicals of New York City, but by 1881 he
was concentrating solely on the economic organization of skilled
workers.
From theoretical study and broken strikes, Gompers and the
cigarmakerS had fashioned a rigid creed: organize all workers;
control working conditions in the shop; build the financial
strength of the union. They charged high dues to finance un-
employment and death benefits. By providing that no strike
benefits would be paid unless the walkout had been approved
88
THE BENDING CROSS
by the national union, they guarded against spontaneous
strikes, which usually ended in starvation and chaos. They
found jobs for their members. They lobbied for legislation to
enforce an eight-hour day, abolish child labor, and establish
bureaus of labor statistics in all states. The pattern worked out
by the cigarmakers was gradually adopted by most of the other
unions connected with the new federation. The federation it-
self was intended to act as a court to settle jurisdictional dis-
putes between unions, a center to organize new crafts, a source
of support in strikes, and a legislative lobby to advance the
cause of the workers.
Trade unionists from Indiana played a leading role in these
development& Mark Moore, who published a labor paper in
Terre Haute, was secretary of the nine-man organizing com-
mittee. Samuel Leffingwell, an Indianapolis printer, presided
at the Pittsburgh conference. Debs was either ignorant or in-
different to these developments until after the founding conven-
tion. But when P. J. McGuire, a genial and persuasive Irishman
who headed the carpenters' union, visited Terre Haute, Debs
quickly called together several of his acquaintances and helped
McGuire to found a new local in the craft. Debs also organized
the shop which printed The Magazine, wrote the constitution
for a branch of the International Typographical Union, and
cheerfully advanced money to meet its bills .. The Magazine thus
became the first ofliciallabor publication in the country to carry
the union label, an honor about which Debs never tired of
boasting.
A railroad brakeman who wanted to organize his craft came
all the way from. New York to get Debs' help. Debs drafted a
constitution for the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen, drew
up the Order's bankbooks and printed forms, gave his visitor
some tips about unionism.. He then took the man downtown
and secured credit for him from every merchant with whom the
BLF did business. When the brakeman was ready to leave
Terre Haute, Debs asked a conductor to give him a trip pass.
The conductor readily agreed, but when told the traveler's
mission he derisively snorted: "Brotherhood of Railroad Brake-
men! What next!" Ignoring the hostility of the Engineers and
the Order of Railway Conductors, Debs wrote in Tlw Magatdne
an open letter to all members of the BLF: I want you to do me
a personal favor; I want you to find a brakeman; I want you
to hand him this letter, and ask him to get a few brakemen to-
gether and organize a lodge of the Brotherhood of Railroad
Brakemen, because if there is any class of men in this country
who need organization, it is the brakemen." The pocket of
Eugene Debs became a general treasury for any trade union
that needed money, and most of them did. Although he earned
six thousand dollars in his four years as City Clerk and his
Brotherhood salary was supposedly fifteen hundred a year, he
had not saved a dollar by January, 1884, when his second term
as City Clerk expired.
Now he really needed money. Freed from daily attendance at
the City Hall, he grabbed the chance to set up new lodges aU
over the country. From coast to coast he followed the iron rails,
riding in the cab if the crew was friendly, occasionally paying his
fare, usually so broke that he caught a freight train, going wher-
ever there were railroaders. Disappointments were frequent.
hardships continuous, victories rare. In Elmira, New York, he
was forced to jump from a moving train and fortunately fell in a
snowdrift. One rainy night the police drove him out of a station
yard and threatened to arrest him after he had waited for hours
to see a fireman. When he arrived in Vicksburg, Mississippi, he
was too poor to hire a hall, so he persuaded the fire chief to let
him use a large room over the fire station for a meeting. Only
three men came to the meeting; the others were afraid of losing
their jobs. Leaving the three men behind, Debs went out on a
tour through the saloons, and was overjoyed to find two other
railroaders. When he got back to the hall with his two captives,
the other three men had left. .
It was slow, gruelling work, but he kept at it. He slept on the
floor in cabooses, occasionally found a bunk in a junction house.
He ate what he could find, wherever he happened to be. And
everywhere he went he talked to the railroad workers-switch-
men, section hands, Negro porters, firemen, the haughty en-
gineers. The depression which had started in 1883 was again
cutting living standards; the men all talked about low wages;
piece rates, unsteady employment, the arrogance of the s u p r ~
intendents. Now if ever, the workers needed unions. Besides
building lodges of the BLF, Debs helped to form the Brother-
hood of Railroad Car Men and to expand a local union in Chi-
cago, the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association, into a flourish-
ing national organization.
He drove himSelf fiercely, desperately, until his strength
failed or his need for advice and comfort carried him back to
Terre Haute, to Daisy and Daniel, to Theodore, to Kate. Al-
ways Kate was there, calm, sympathetic. They went for long
walks along the towpath that bordered the old canal bed, while
Debs talked vividly about the railroad towns, about the fear
of the workers in Vicksburg, the callousness of company de-
tectives, the poverty and bleak dread of his country and his
people. He sometimes sounded listless, but when he spoke of
what he had seen and what he hoped, burning words came from
some hidden source. His supple hands moved in the air, making
visions of the white-walled cities that men would some day build
on earth. Although Kate would never have cared about the labor
movement had it not been for the personality of the man who
walked beside her, she felt strangely drawn by his candor and
persuasiveness. Debs too felt the boQ.ds that tied him to this
wO:p1an, her independence and understanding. Life was too in-
secure for a single person with no anchor, no foundation. One
day he asked her to marry him. She accepted, but they were
not married until more than a year later.
Debs would not stop his work, would not change his life. Even
in Terre Haute he could not rest. Workers came to tell him their
problems; he was asked to lend money and to officiate at fun-
erals. He investigated every railroad accident that happened in
the state, taking careful notes to be used in editorial demands
for safety legislation. In Terre Haute the deaths were many-
William Saunders, charter member of Vigo Lodge; Bill Morgan,
veteran railroader and pioneer member of the Engineers. Ten
years after Vigo Lodge was founded, only four of the twenty-
one original members still answered the roll call. Some of the
others had dropped out, but many had lost their lives. Debs had
to make out all of the checks for death benefits; he knew how
many there were. The list kept mounting-a thousand dollars
to the widow, a thousand dollars to the widow, always the same,
never different. He was thinking of names, places, when he
solemnly said: "There are many homes that would be shadowed
in gloom but for the Brotherhood."
The BLF continued to stand aloof from the more radical
philosophy of Sam Gompers and the new federation. In 1879 the
BLF convention had adopted a policy of "ignoring strikes," and
that provision was rigidly enforced. The Brotherhood said that
it was an insurance organization, denied that it was a trade
nnion; carefully courted the favor of companies, but many rail-
roads continued to be hostile. Debs fought vigorously against
individual acts of repression-he said the blacklist was "dirty
in its very conception and damnable in every feature"-but he
had not changed his general views:
Some have gone so far as to say that there is a natural, a neces-
conflict between labor and capital. These are very shallow
thinkers, or else very great demagogues. Argument is of no use
against these people, either they cannot or they will not see the
falsity of their statement.
He still believed that a spirit of compromise and fair play could
settle all labor difficulties without resort to strikes. But because
he also thought that new laws were needed to protect the work-
ing people, he again agreed to run for office. At the national
convention of the BLF in 1884, an amendment to.the bylaws
was introduced: "No salaried Grand Officer shall hold or accept
a political office." On a voice vote the amendment was declared
adopted. Debs then rose to state that the measure would force
him to resign as Secretary-Treasurer, since he had accepted the
Democratic nomination for the Indiana legislature. This office
was largely nominal and required little time, he said, but it was
nonetheless a political office. Only the earnest. request of voters
in his district had persuaded him to accept, but, having ac-
cepted he would not withdraw. Mter Debs' statement, the
amendment was defeated by a yote of one hundred forty-nine
Nays to fifty-seven Ayes.
Grand Secretary and Treasurer, Brotherhood of Locomotive
THE BENDING CROSS
Firemen, Candidate for the Legislature," read the campaign
posters. Yellow handbills were thrown broadcast through the
town. White ribbons proclaiming "Debs---Dur Choice" ap-
peared on velvet lapels, overalls, homespun shirts. A smooth
voice and an eloquent forefinger harangued crowds of voters
all over the district. In those frenzied autumn weeks Eugene
Debs again proved that he owned the trademark of a true leader.
The voters liked Debs because they recognized him as a local
product. He could talk on equal terms with anybody in the
district, simply because he was so commonplace. Debs wore his
Sunday clothes to the political rallies and to all public gatherings,
but he often wandered around his neighborhood dressed in
overalls and a railroader's cap.
Typical, ordinary candidates often win elections, but they
seldom arouse enthusiasm. Debs was more than typical; he was
unusual. He had qualities which made him a part of the crowd;
he also had qualities that made him stand out above the crowd.
The Midwesterners respected kindliness, courage, and devotion,
three traits which reached the extreme measure in ,Eugene
Debs. So while the voters accepted Debs and felt at ease in his
presence, they also recognized that his speeches, so ordinary
in their florid phrasing, carried a sincerity and emotional im-
pact that could never be manufactured by a political hack. The
people believed in Debs, and sent him to Indianapolis to speak
for them.
When Debs was sworn into the state House of Representatives
on January 8, 1885, he had already drafted a bill which would
require railroad companies to compensate their employees for
injuries suffered on duty. Appointed to the Railway Committee,
he maneuvered the bill through the lower chamber, andre-
joiced when it was sent to the Senate. But his exultation was
short-lived. When the bill reached the State Senate, the mem-
bers of that body toyed with it for a few days, finally cut the
guts out of it. Debs, convinced that he had failed the railroad
workers, promptly withdrew the bill from consideration. Other
measures in which Debs was deeply interested also went down
to defeat. He bolted his party to vote with the Republicans on a
bill to abolish all distinctions of race and color in the laws of
Indiana, but the bill lost by three votes. He voted for a bill to
extend suffrage to women; again he was on the losing side.
By the time for adjournment, Debs had decided not to stand
for re-election. He was ill-suited for the compromise and favorit-
ism of political life, but his reaction was much too extreme. By
the standards of the times, that legislative session in Indiana was
a good one; it passed a resolution supporting a Federal eight-hour
law for all trades but agriculture, and wrote into law an equal-
rights act for all places of "public accommodation or amuse-
ments," a township tax of 1 per cent for the support of the li-
braries, a mechanics' lien law, coal-mine safety provisions, a
prohibition on the importation of foreign contract-labor. But
Eugene Debs felt that he had failed his electorate; when he
reached home in March, he told Theodore that he would never
again rUll for public office. '
He went to see Kate Metzel, already preparing for their June
wedding. Kate went to Louisville for her trousseau of fawn-
colored cashmere with a brocaded front, collar and cuffs of crim-
son velvet, hat and gloves to match, all very proper for a cere-
mony in the Episcopal Church, of which she was a devout mem-
ber. Town gossip and jokes revolved around the romance; when
Ida Harper went south for a vacation she wrote to TIw Maga-
sine: "Why is there no Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in
Florida? ... I would ask the Grand Secretary and Treasurer,
but, with the Brotherhood, the Magazine, the Legislature and a
'sweetheart, all on hand a t once, he has no time to answer ques-
tions."
Ida Harper failed to ask the most popular question: Why did
Eugene Debs choose Kate Metzel? He was friendly and open-
handed; Kate seemed frigid, aloof. This speculation ignored
several factors. Debs was doubtless influenced 'by the happy
m ~ i g e of his parents, in which Daniel was the man of affairs
while Daisy usually remained at home, a retiring housewife.
Although Eugene Debs did not believe in a subordinate posi-
tion for women, he was subject to the power of example. Also
Debs' career required frequent, extensive tours. His wife did
not need to be a constantly charming companion; she did need
to be stable, secure, self-reliant. Kate Metzel certainly had these
THE BENDING CROSS
characteristics. Debs was seeking a typical wife but an unusual
marriage.
At 6:80 A.M. on June 9,1885, the sun was pouring through the
windows of St. Stephen's Church and splashing across the white
drapes and fragrant flowers at the altar. Gifts had been arriving
for weeks--silver, Persian rugs, furniture; the Brotherhood
lodges in Chicago had sent a parlor set of mahogany, uphol-
stered in blue, olive, and old-gold plush. The church was
crowded with friends, sleepy, yawning, excited. Kate was quite
handsome in her tailored traveling costume; the thirty-year-old
bridegroom, wearing his inevitable gray suit, "looked exceed-
ingly pale and thoughtful as he walked up the aisle," Ida Harper
wrote, "as if he fully realized the important step."
The solemnity of the ceremony was forgotten on a luxurious
spendthrift honeymoon in the East. After two weeks the young
couple went home to a sentimental reception given by Vigo
Lodge. Hundreds of people crowded into the hall to congratulate
Debs, hear a mawkish speech by Frank Arnold, and vigorously
applaud a recitation of "Katie Lee and Willie Gray." Debs felt
uncomfortable at the thought of being alone with Kate in their
housekeeping room; it would then be necessary to explain how
they had spent a thousand dollars on a two-week trip. The in-
evitable moment came when he was seated at last on the ugly
mahogany sofa, a.nd Kate was facing him. Unable to tell the
truth, unable to delay telling the truth, Debs chose a circular
approach to the problem. He simply asked Kate if she had en-
joyed their trip. When she enthusiastically said Yes, he relaxed
into a broad grin and murmured, "That's good, because we're
dead broke now."
[ 3 ]
FINANCIAL WORRIES, and they were not critical, quickly became
Kate's problem; Debs was trying to understand and react to a
growing revolt in the Brotherhood. Compelled by unemploy-
ment and bad conditions, the workers had begun a mighty
counteroffensive. The Federated Trades and Labor Council,
soon to become the American Federation of 4OOr, Was spear-
heading a drive for an eight-hour day in all industries. This
movement was to culminate in a nation-wide demonstration
on May I, 1886; the employers were fighting vigorously to stem
the tide. The railroad workers, feeling the effects of the depres-
sion, began to rebel against the timorous no-strike policy of the
Brotherhoods; a victorioUs strike by the Knights of Labor
against the Gould system was a strong argument for aggressive
action. When switchmen in East St. Louis struck for a pay raise
the employers answered' by importing thugs and gunmen from
the South to guard their property and break the strike. These
strikebreakers, deputized by the sheriff, fired into a crowd of
strikers and several men were killed- The same tactic was used
by the Pinkertons during a strike at the McCormick tractor
plant in Chicago. In neither case were the gunmen indicted
for the killings. There was bitter talk on both sides: Tom Scott
of the Pennsylvania Railroad advised the, "rifle diet" for all
strikers. the Chicago Ti'tne8 argued the merits of hand grenades.
several anarchists wrote about dynamite and the class struggle.
The delegates to the BLF convention of 1885 were tired of
the blacklist, yellow-dog contracts, unemployment, and long
hours. They were fed-up with meek submission. They thought
the time had come for a fight. Their first act was to knock out
the no-strike provision in their constitution. They did not want
to strike, but by God they would if they had to; they proved this
by providing a fifteen-thousand-dollar strike fund. Then the di&-
satisfied men went after their Grand officers. The previous
December Grand Master Frank Arnold had written to the presi-
dent of a railroad: "Labor always cripples and weakens itself
whenever it antagonizes Capital .. So long as we keep it
[the BLF] a benevolent organization, just that long will it
thrive. '.' ." The delegates resolved to "repudiate the said
letter in all of its sentiments." They then deposed Arnold. elect-
ing Vice Grand Master Frank P. Sargent to head the order.
They went straight down the list, throwing out every officer
except Sargent and Debs. Debs tried to resign, but the resig-
nation was turned down. He was unanimously returned to his
job as Editor and Secretary-Treasurer.
The delegates also ordered Debs to attend the convention of
THE BENDING CROSS
the Brotherho.o.d o.f Locomo.tive Engineers the fo.llo.wing mo.nth
in New Orleans, and report that the BLF was "no.wa labor o.r-
ganization" and was "desirous o.f co-o.perating with them in all
their grievances." There was o.bvio.us need fo.r jo.int actio.n by
the two. o.rders. Since the Engineers did no.t admit anybody who
had no.t handled a locomo.tive fo.r a year, many members o.f that
craft still belo.nged to. the BLF. When Debs presented a rail-
road with the demands o.f the engineers in his unio.n, he was
o.ften co.nfro.nted by a contradicto.ry set o.f demands from the
Bro.therhood o.f Engineers. The resultant confusio.n defeated
every mo.ve fo.r a wage increase. Since 1877 the Firemen had
tried to. gain the co-o.peratio.n o.f the Engineers, but every step
in that directio.n had been blocked by P. M. Arthur, the co.n-
servative leader o.f the N o.w that the Firemen had
made pro.visio.n fo.r strikes, jo.int actio.n had become do.ubly
necessary, fo.r no. railro.ad walko.ut eQuId succeed unless it
sto.pped the trains, and no. single craft could achieve that pur-
po.se.
The Engineers' conventio.n in New Orleans startE'd o.ne o.f the
mo.st important battles in Debs' life. His pro.posal o.f friendship
never reached the conventio.n floor. P. M. Arthur, stodgy, well
dressed, arro.gant, so.lemnly proposed a mo.tio.n to the machine-
contro.lled delegates: UNo. engineer Who. belo.ngs to the Bro.ther-
hood o.f Locomo.tive Firemen shall hereafter represent his divi-
sio.n in the annual co.nventio.n o.f the locomo.tive engineers."
The delegates ado.pted the mo.tio.n.
Eugene Debs, watching these events from the gallery, was
scarcely able to. believe the scene enacted befo.re him. His vio.lent
indignatio.n was heightened by the possibility that Arthur in-
tended the mo.tio.n as a perso.nal affro.n.t. The next mo.nth he
reported the New Orleans proceedings in an article that sho.wed
unusual restraint. Under a calm headline, "The Aristocracy o.f
Labo.r," Debs declared that Arthur's mo.tio.n "smacks o.f perse-
cutio.n. Its purpose is to. embarrass o.ur o.rder." But the affair
was no.t clo.sed by the repo.rt in The Magazine. P. M. Arthur's
arro.gance started a chain o.f adjustments that revo.lutio.nized
the labo.r mo.vement o.n the railroads.
Debs no.w began a do.uble-edged pro.gram: a criticism o.f all
tendencies toward exclusiveness, and a theoretical and practical
demonstration of the virtues of joint action, by the railroad
unions. On January 6, 1886, his assistant editor, William Hynes,
presided at a Denver conference of all BLF lodges on the Union
Pacific. This conference pointed out that labor had suffered
"due to the independent action of distinct organizations, at
tempting to adjust difficulties that involve the interests of many
branches of industry." It then proposed a federation of all the
Brotherhoods to settle disputes with the Union Pacific. This
federation woUld act only if the individual union involved was
unable to secure justice. Any desire to promote strikes was
denied, but it was obvious beneath the doubletalk that strikes
were considered preferable to further submission.
In spite of the opposition of P. M. Arthur, who believed that
he could win greater gains by siding with the companies against
the other Brotherhoods, the engineers and firemen worked to-
gether to score victories over the New York City Elevated
Railways and the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad Both disputes
were settled peacefully. The New York Elevated contract won
special acclaim, since it provided a pay increase, extra pay for
overtime work, the ninehour day, a half day's pay for reporting
to work, strict seniority, and reinstatement of all men who had
been fired during the dispute. Debs jubilantly wrote in The
Magazine: ''The incident supplies abundant proof that the
two great Brotherhoods are necessary to each other ... "
Some railroads counterattacked by trying to undermine the
Brotherhoods. They set up compulsory insurance plans for all
employees. The Pennsylvania thought of the idea, promoted it
as a measure intended to help the workers. Debs, quick to
realize the danger of the scheme, wrote a lengthy analysis for
The Magazine. He claimed that the benefits were ridiculously
low compared to the premiums, that the principle of compul-
sion was intended to wreck the workers' organizations, and that
employees were required to sign away all claims against the
company for damages in case of an accident. The Pennsylvania
was forced to withdraw the proposal, but it was revived sev-
eral times in-the coming years.
Debs also struck a blow at this time agaiilst George M. Pull-
48
THE BENDING CROSS
man, one of the most powerful industrialists in America. As a
young man, George Pullman had worked for his brother, a
cabinetmaker in Albion, New York. In 1855 he moved to Chi-
cago, where he became a successful street contractor and worked
out the plans for building a railroad sleepingcar. The next nine
years were spent in perfecting the blueprint. Although the rail-
roads showed little interest in the invention, Pu11man gained
some practical experience by remodeling a few day coaches into
sleepingcars.
In 1864 Pul1man and a partner began to build the :first sleep-
ingcar, concealing the upper berth in the wall and hinging the
sea t cushion to form a lower berth. The inventor displayed great
ski1l; his basic design is still used. Pullman had refused to com-
promise in constructing The Pioneer, which was both higher
and wider than the locomotives and coaches. But the construc-
tion of the :first transcontinental lines made the sleepingcar in-
dispensable. Soon every railroad began to raise bridges and move
station platforms so that they could use Pullman cars. The Pull-
man Palace Car Company was established in 1867 at Palmyra,
New York, moved several times, and finally established its
main plant at Pul1man, Illinois, in 1881.
George Pullman was certain that he alone knew how to build
sleepingcars. He was also certain that he alone knew how to
organize the lives of men. The town of Pullman, a Chicago
suburb, was widely advertised as a "model community," but
it was run like a feudal manor. Conductors on the Pullman cars
were treated like workers in the Pullman shops. They drew $75
per month wages, from which they paid $!tO for meals and $4
for uniforms. They were subject to a system of :fines which took
an average toll of $6 a month from each man. George Pul1man
hired spies to ride in his cars and report the slightest infraction
of rules by any conductor. The conductor was :fined for each
violation reported, and was given no chance to defend himself.
Debs collected these chargeS from such a variety of sources
that he could not doubt their truth, so he wrote a vigorous at-
tack on Pullman's highhanded exploitation of his workers. This
incident, of minor importance at the time, became highly signifi-
cant in 1894, when George M. Pullman and Eugene Debs were
the main actors in a drama that rocked the nation.
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS <t9
The complex struggle against the forced Debs to
alter his notions of trade unionism. While keeping the insurance
plans as a goal in themselves and as a means of stabilizing mem-
bership, he added new features. Written contracts with em-
ployers; to be won by strikes if necessary, were at the heart of
his strategy. Such contracts were the main way to win better
wages, hours, and working conditions, but he also advocated
several new laws. His articles in support of eight-hour legisla-
tion, which carried the Federated Trades Council campaign
into the Brotherhoods, emphasized that it would remedy un-
employment and raise the level of public intelligence. To a large
extent these ideas came from Debs' but they
were influenced by the successful example of the unions in the
AFL. The Cigarmakers, the Bakers, the Coal Miners, the build-
ing trades' unions, were all making huge gains in membership,
proving the value of Samuel Gompers' theories.
Meanwhile, the Knights of Labor was falling to pieces. The
Knights had long been divided into factions: the trade unionists
who belonged to craft unions and regarded the K of L as a
political supplement to the Federated Trades Council, and con-
fused reformers who opposed the craft unions. The crisis had
come in 1885, when the packinghouse workers completely shut
down the Chicago stockyards. Conditions indicated that there
was every chance of victory; then Terence Powderly, chief of
the Knights, ordered the strikers to return to work. The strike
was soon broken, and so was the K of L in Chicago. The next
spring there was a bitter strike on the Gould. railways in the
Southwest, which ended in utter defeat. When the Knights'
convention met in 1886, the anti trade unionists had a majority,
and all members of the Knights were ordered to withdraw from
the Cigarmakers' International Union. Most of them responded
by withdrawing from the Knights of Labor. The once-proud
organization, which had boasted an enro1lment of more than a
half million, began a precipitous decline. Debs followed these
developments cloSely in The Magazine, wrote an article of pro-
test against Powderly's actions, learned much from the history
of the Knights.
The men who advocated the economic organization of the
workers had won a clear victory over the champions of a multi-
class reform organization, and Debs did not forget it. He was
clearly lining up with the principles of the Federated Trades
Council, but he lagged behind Gompers in two important
respects: he denounced the boycott and the closed shop as in-
fringements on liberty, and he sometimes acted hastily or care-
lessly, with little regard for the possible consequences of his
action. His mistakes were usually of minor import, but one
error, for which he was indirectly responsible, might have
brought disaster to himself and the BLF.
[ 4 ]
LATE IN 1885, The Magazine carried an astonishing article
about the use of dynamite in labor disputes:
Legitimate wa.l'fare in the future is to be in the interest of the
weak, the oppressed, those who aspire to be free. Dynamite is to
be a potent weapon in the contest.
Just seven months later came the Haymarket episode. Although
Debs could truthfully have claimed that he did not endorse the
use of violence, his argument would have been brushed aside
during that frenzied affair. The phrases about dynamite as "a
potent weapon" of "legitimate warfare" were sufficient provo-
cation for the employers to move against the entire BLF.
Chicago, long known for the bitterness and violence of its
labor struggles, was the national center of the eight-hour day
campaign. The employers there were united in opposition to the
shorter workday; the workers were equally determined to win
their demand. On May Day, 1886, more than forty thousand
workingmen put down their tools in the demonstration which
climaxed the campaign. The entire city fearfully awaited the
menacing outbreak. The wait was brief. On May 8 the police
killed a striker at the McCormick reaper works, where fourteen
hundred men had been locked out for months. The anarchists
immediately called a meeting at Haymarket Square for the
next evening to protest the killing. The meeting was entirely
peaceful until a police captain led a large troop of his men to
disperse the audience. As the patrol approached the crowd, a
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS SJ.
bomb was thrown into their ranks and seven policemen were
killed or fatally wounded. Labor leaders and ordinary workers
throughqut the city wel"!'l picked up by the police and finally
eight anarchists and unionists, several of them leaders in the
eight-hour movement, were indicted for the bombing.
Only two of the accused men had been anywhere near the
meeting, and both of them were demonstrably innocent of
throwing the bomb, but the judge presented a new theory in his
charge to the jury: H the past language of the accused has been
such as to incite violence, they are guilty of this crime, even if
they knew nothing about it and were not present when it was
committed. On a principle which violated the basic rules of
American law, in a courtroom clotted with prejudice, the eight
men were convicted of murder.
The public protest against this verdict was prompt and elo-
quent. Not merely labor leaders, but United States Senators
and wealthy bankers, exclaimed that the judge was biased, that
the jury was hand-picked, that the entire proceedings were
highly improper. But Eugene, Debs said absolutely nothing for
more than five months. Debs. never famous for reticence, was
truly in a dilemma. He had no sympathy for the anarchist
doctrines of the accused men; he had often criticized the use of
violence and had declared that the class struggle was only "the
creation of diseased brains." His objection to the Haymarket
trial was based 'on other factors: the irregular proceedings, a
belief that the indictment was a punishment of free speech, a.
conviction that the employers were trying to frame eight labor
leaders.
Only one theory seems to explain Debs' unusual silence. Any
protest on his part might have called attention to the article
about dynamite in The Magazine. with the result of dire punish-
ment for the entire BLF. Perhaps Debs felt that he was forced
to choose between treachery to his own union and treachery to
the men convicted of murder. There is no evidence that Debs
discussed this problem with anybody. For five months he
wrestled with it in silence, and doubtless in torment.
Finally he could no longer remain silent. The higher courts
had denied appeals for the convicted men. The last hope to save
THE BENDING CROSS
their lives lay in securing clemency from 'the governor of
linois. Eugene Debs, in a fervent article in The Magazine,
singled out the right of free speech as the major issue in the
case. A free press and free speech he called "the twin glories of
American goverru:i:tent. . '. . Let this verdict stand, let it
come the practice of the courts, let it go unrevoked, and free
speech is as dead in America as it is in Russia." The attack on
freedom of expression was doomed to failure: "Ideas and
ions escape the death penalty, the halter. the faggot, and the
wheel."
Debs spoke too late to help save the lives of the condemned
men. One of them committed suicide, four were hanged, three
were sent to prison. Eugene Debs never mentioned the r61e
he had played in the defense campaign for the Haymarket
martyrs. But for forty years he cherished the memory of these
men. He wrote newspaper articles about them. He referred to
them often in his speeches. He made frequent pilgrimages to
Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago, where the executed men were
buried. These eight men became, to Eugene Debs, "the first
martyrs in the cause of industrial freedom." Eleven years after
the execution, Debs sang to their memory: "aye, I would take
them, if I could, from peaceful slumber in their martyr graves-
I would place joint to joint in their dislocated necks-I would
make the halter the symbol of redemption--I would restore
the flesh to their, skeleton bones--their eyes should again flash
defiance to the enemies of humanity, and their tongues, again,
more eloquent than all the heroes of oratory, should speak the
truth to a gainsaying world. Alas, this cannot be done-but
something can be done. The stigma fixed upon their names by
an outrageous trial can be forever obliterated and their fame,
be made to shine with resplendent glory on the pages of his-
tory."
[ Jj ]
DEBS, in 1886, was already learning the daily reality of
marrIage to an open-hearted labor leader. Debs was gone from
Terre Haute, for weeks at a time; when he came home he was
often sick from fatigue or temporary discouragement. He told
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS OS
wearisome stories about meetings when nobody towns
where the workers were frightened or indifferent. When he was
in Terre Haute, he held long conferences with his brother
Theodore, Frank Sargent, Tom Harper-then he left for another
trip. Kate lived in housekeeping rooms because her husband
acted as if his three-thousand-dollar-a-year salary was a fund
for needy railroaders. Nobody ever asked Eugene Debs for
money; he usually gave it to them before they asked. Debs often
left on an organizing tour with two suitcases of clothes,and
came back home with nothing but the shirt on his back. He just
did not understand health or money, squandering one as
freely as he squandered the other.
So Kate Debs stayed in one or two rooms, learning to live a
lonely and bitter existence. Since she took no interest in social
life and had but few friends, she spent long hours by herself.
She read books by the dozen, by the hundred. She also began to
change slowly under the impact of her new isolation. Her home,
always a matter of importance, now grew to exaggerated sig-
nificance. She learned to clean the same room three times a
day, and then to resent any disturbance, any untidiness. Al-
ways neat, she became too unpleasant in her neatness.
She also developed another habit which persisted for life. Kate
Debs, caught between the example of her own family and the
practice of her husband, attached her mind to the promise of
financial security. She opened a private bank account, and often
consulted her brothers about financial affairs. But Kate and her
husband, with contradictory viewpoints, soon learned to ignore
the con:Oict. Each of them went his own ways, in good-humored
tolerance of the other.
Although Kate was not rich, did not have everything she
wanted, she was comfortably situated and managed to save
something. Worse than money problems was the attitude of
some of the respectable element in town, who raised their eye-
brows at the article about dynamite and gossiped some about
Gene's drinking. Debs could not hold his liquor at all, but he
drank because he was a genial man and his friends drank. When
James Whitcomb Riley or some railroader offered to set them
up, Debs could not refuse.
M.
THE BENDING CROSS
Kate was proud of Riley's poem about Terre Haute in which
her husband was mentioned:
Go search the earth from end to end
And where's a better all-round friend
Than Eugene Debs?-a man that stands
And jest holds out in his two hands
As warm a heart as ever beat
Betwixt here and the Mercy Sea t!
Besides being proud, Kate was truly fond of Riley, but she also
dreaded his visits. His appearance was always the signal for a
jovial, backslapping tour,of the local saloons, with Kate stand-
ing at the window at home anxiously waiting for her husband's
return. She was always greatly relieved when the two tipplers
returned safely, On one occasion she waited for hours, pacing the
floor, peering down the street, wringing her handkerchief.
Finally the carriage' came. Debs got out, shook hands, said
good-by, then got back in with Riley and the carriage drove
away.
Even in the Brotherhood his occasional intoxication caused
Debs some embarrassment. The national convention of 1886
voted to expel any lodge that sold intoxicants at any entertain-
ment. The next day Debs and Vice Grand Master .Tohn Han-
nahan were both accused of having been drunk at a meeting in
Buffalo. "Debs admitted to having drunk to excess on the 0c-
casion referred to in the charges," said the report, but'he was
excused after he swore that it would never happen again: Then
he was unanimously re-elected to both of his posts and given a
gold medal: "To Eugene V. Debs, by the B. of L. F.-an emblem
of the unfailing esteem of his toiling fellow men."
[ 6 ]
IN HIS SPEECH to the 1886 convention, Debs emphasized that
the BLF was "not engaged in any quarrel between capital and
labor. There can be no such quarrel unless it is caused 'by delib-
erate piracy on one side and unreasonable demands on the other .
" All we ask is an honest day's wages for an honest day's
work, and we are willing to be considerate and just." But he
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS ISS
carefully pointed out in The Magazine that preparedness was a
wise policy:
For purposes of protection, the throttle and the scoop, the
switch and the brake, must be in close alliance and equally firm
and defiant, and when corporations see this federation accom-
plished, no strikes will occur, because a strike under such cir-
cumstances would mean an immediate cessation of railroad
transportation on the line or system where it occurred.
Although there were occasional defea ts, joint action by the BLF
and the Engineers was bringing unprecedented gains. A wage
increase was peacefully won from several lines in the East. Then
followed a' strike on the Brooklyn Elevated Railway to halt
discriminatory firings of unionists. The first strike ever au-
thorized by the BLF, it was broken within a week, but this de-
feat was more than offset by favorable contracts negotiated
with the Louisville & Nashville, the Newport News & Missis-
sippi Valley, the Wabash system. Debs used these victories to
stress the need for continued co-operation:
Fraternal, brotherly unity is natural. ... It does not mean
federation but fraternity ... it means that these Brother-
hoods while one as the sea, one in the great fundamental pur-
pose of improving conditions, in elevating character, are sep-
arate as the waves moving in grand procession toward separate
and distinct goals. . . .
. The BLF felt so prosperous that it moved into new offices in
an elaborate building that Riley McKeen built on Wabash
A venue. But this expenditure was ill timed for the Brotherhood
was soon embroiled in a costly strike. On February 27, 1888, the
engineers and firemen called a joint walkout against the Chicago.
Burlington & Quincy Railroad. The action had been brewing
since 1886, when the workers accepted a very unsatisfactory
contract. In 1888 they asked for wage increases, a minimum
daily wage, acceptance of the double scale of twelve hours or a
hundred miles as a standard day's work. seniority "when ability
is equal," and a fair procedure for settling grievances. Negotia-
tions proved fruitless; the company stalled and hedged, made
offers and then withdrew them. Finally. at the demand of the
rank and file the strike was called.
Trouble wi th other railroad unions began a t once. The switch-
men were sO incensed at the past arrogance of P. M .. Arthur
that they refused to quit work. The Knights of Labor were
openly filling the strikers' jobs in retaliation for strikebreaking
by the Engineers two months earlier during a K of L strike on
the Philadelphia & Reading. It was a delicate and critical situa-
tion. Sargent and Debs went first to see Joseph Buchanan, the
editor of a Chicago labor paper. Buchanan had been a labor
editor in Denver, member of the Executive Board of the Knights
of Labor, and had led the successful 1885 strike against the
Gould system. His influence might be strong enough to keep the
Knights off the engines. At first the editor was unwilling to
interfere. He reminded his visitors of the hostility that Arthur
had often shown to other unions.
But Debs turned loose his charm, and soon won his point.
"You are too true a friend of the cause of labor," he told Bu-
chanan, "to allow another man's errors or your own personal
grievances to govern your course, Buchanan. No matter how
'leaders' may err, it is your duty and mine to exert what in-
fluence we may possess to prevent organized workingmen from
cutting each other's throats."
Buchanan was convinced for two reasons: "I liked Debs; he
was loyal and frank; besides, I saw the truth and good sense in
his remark." As the C.B. & Q. brought in the K of L strike-
breakers from Pennsylvania, Buchanan asrembled them in a
parlor of the Briggs House and urged them to respect the strike.
Most of them went back home.
Then the Brotherhood leaders made a passionate series of
appeals to the switchmen and coaxed them off the trains. No
other person, not even the leaders of their own union, was more
popular among the switchmen Debs; man by man they
left their jobs. Debs strained every ability to make the walkout
a success, writing fiery articles for The Magazine, exhorting
groups of men on street corners or in the railroad yards. He
worked tirelessly, endlessly, not going home, not seeing Kate,
eating on the run, sleeping on desk tops and wooden benches.
He said the same thing at every meeting: the strikers had an
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS t11
honest grievance, they had sought a peaceful settlement, every
railroader had a personal stake in the outcome.
In spite of the determination and heroism of the workers, the
tide began to run against them. By March 15, the company
claimed to have a full working force on the job. but the men
would not admit defeat. The walkout dragged on into the spring,
with twenty-seven hundred strikers waiting for the company to
surrender. Although train schedules were being met. the cor-
poration was hard hit. Losses for the :6rst six months of the
year were nearly ten million dollars. The scab engineers and
:6remen were proving to be totally incompetent; wreck and
damage losses alone exceeded a million dollars. Pinkerton de
tectives were hired to combat the strikers, but Debs confined
his anger against the Pinkertons to an acrid blast in The Mag-
azine:
They are distorted, deformed, hideous mentally and morally.
Their trade is treason, their breath pollution and yet the officials
of the C.B. & Q. formed a conspiracy with these professional
liars. perjurers, cutthroats and murderers to overcome a
strike, the result of a policy of flagrant injustice.
Debs knew that the detectives were spectacular but unim.
portant-the real enemies were hunger and a lack of nnity.
Strike relief was his personal responsibility and month after
month he .urged members of every Brotherhood to give three
dollars to the strikers. He persuaded his own union to give
more than two hundred and :6fty thousand dollars by arguing
that the C.B. & Q. would be forced to yield soon. He went to
local unions and his friends with a plea for money. H they could
only hold out they could win. And the money came. in dimes
and dollars, poor men giving to those who were starving. But
not enough of it came. so Debs borroWed twenty-nine thousand
dollars for the strike fund. and insured the debt by his personal
note. There was, thought Debs. still some hope. The men were
standing together. absolutely peaceful, not giving the railroad
any excuse to ask for the militia in a repetition of 1877.
Unable to defeat the rank and :6le, the corporation officials
68
THE BENDING CROSS
too became desperate. Finally they decided to go to court and
ask for an injunction against the strike. Panic-stricken, P. M.
Arthur consulted a lawyer, who advised that the strike leaders
would be liable to jail sentences for contempt of court if the in-
junction were secured and they disobeyed it. That was enough
for Arthur. He called together the joint strike committee and
told them he intended to revoke the strike order: "Brothers, I
am legally advised that unless this order is rescinded, I am
liable to be sent to jail; I want to say here that I would not go
to jail 24 hours for your whole Brotherhood." Debs was speech-
less. The injunction had not even been granted, might not be
granted, and already Arthur was running for cover. But the
Engineers were ordered back to work, and most of them went.
The firemen were left to carry the battle alone, and the pres-
sure was further increased when the Grand Chief of the Con-
ductors issued a circular condemning the strike. This time Debs
struck back in a furious article in The Magazine, but hope of
winning the strike had become very slight.
The failure of the Engineers and Conductors to hold the strike
reinforced Debs' conviction that his federation plan was neces-
sary, and he pressed even more vigorously for "a union of
Brotherhoods of certain railway employees for purposes of
strength when union is required to secure a righteous settlement
of controversies which relate to their welfare." Denying that
such a plan was visionary, Debs claimed that the timeslde-
manded its immediate fulfillment. Just as individual workers
had combined to protect their mutual interests, the Brother-
hoods should combine on matters of common concern. A single
union was helpless against a giant railroad, wrote Debs, but the
Burlington strike could have been won in a day "if from the
first there had been federation between engineer and firemen,
switchmen and brakemen on the C.B. & Q." The firemen, who
had rejected federation two years earlier, now accepted it com-
pletely. The convention of 1888 named Debs chairman of a
three-man committee to set up a formal alliance with the other
Brotherhoods.
In September and October of 1888 most of the strikers strag-
gled back to work, and Debs turned his attention to the Presi-
dential campaign. His personal disgust with the legislature had
not blinded him to the need for political reform. Now he urged
the workers to vote against the enemies of labor: "To wield the
ballot intelligently and heroically is the workingmen's last re-
sort, in fact, it is the remedy which commends itself to all right
thinking men." To Debs the issues in this campaign seemed
clear. The Republican Party, firmly controlled by the business
interests, nominated Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, a corpora-
tion lawyer and Senator who had been exceedingly hostile to
labor. On the other hand the Democratic incumbent, Grover
Cleveland, was a man of great personal integrity, if little imag-
ination. Cleveland had shown some respect for labor's rights
and had been instrumental in setting up a board of voluntary
arbitration for labor disputes on the railroads. So Debs agreed
to share the platform with Senator Voorhees at a mammoth
Democratic rally in Terre Haute. Most of Debs' speech was an
attack on Harrison and the Republicans; only in the final sen-
tence did he mention the Democratic nominee:
words of Grover Cleveland, "Tell the truth,"
have been inscribed upon the banners of the Democratic party
and I believe that when the campai@ will have closed the work-
ingmen throughout the country will have dignified and glori-
fied themselves and their cause by having shown to the people
of the country that the man who volunteers to organize a com-
pany of soldiers to shoot down the workingmen when they are
striking for their rights never can become President of this
country.
In 1888 Debs applied these words to Cleveland's opponent. Six
years later he applied them to Cleveland
On January 3, 1889, the Brotherhood called off the Burlington
walkout. It had actually ended months before, a complete defeat
for the strikers. This labor struggle had been a crucial lesson for
Eugene Debs. He had been educated in the only school he a,c-
cepted-the fury of battle. He was still able to believe that the
profit-sharing plans of John Wanamaker heralded a new era of
peace. But he would never again be able to say, as he had
saId III 1877, that a strike "signifies anarchy and revolution."
He had now signed his name to the opposite view:
The strike is the weapon of the oppressed, of men capabTe of
appreciating justice and having the courage to resist wrong and
contend for principle. The nation had for its cornerstone a
strike, and while arrogant injustice throws down the gauntlet
and challenges the right to the conflict, strikes will come, come
by virtue of irrevocable laws, destined to have a wider sweep
and greater power as men advance in intelligence and inde-
pendence.
CHAPTER 4
[ 1 ]
TI
m condemnation to a sterile marriage burned griev-
.. ously with Kate and Eugene Debs. They had fought
stubbornly against the realization of Kate's barrenness.
When they finally faced the problem, Kate proposed that she go
to Louisville for an operation. This plan was emphatically ve-
toed by her mother: "Now, Kate, you're not really sick. It's
better to let wen enough alone." Forced to choose between his
desire for children and his concern for Kate's health, Debs
agreed with Mrs. Baur. Thus was blocked another potential
outlet for Debs' idealism. The consequences are uncertain. Per-
haps normal family responsibilities, by emphasizing a whole
sphere of human problems, would have hurried his feet even
more. rapidly along the path he ultimately chose. But as a
father, his love for his own children might have made him more
hesitant about decisions, more inclined to compromise.
The impact of childlessn'ess on Kate Debs is more apparent.
She was unable to share completely the justification that Eugene
Debs found in his beliefs. For him the labor movement had
become thousands of brothers; for her it remained a faceless
mass. Through four long years she had lived a bleak and lonely
marriage. Only on those rare days when her husband was in
Terre Haute did she really have companionship. Owning few
friends, recoiling from women's clubs and civic activities, she
lived in sell-imposed isolation from the warmth of social life.
Day after day she remained in her ugly housekeeping rooms,
reading novels, meticulously cleaning the furniture, resenting
her condition. Gradually there grew within her a fervent longing
for a home of her own, ornate, stately, imposing. By 1889 the
desire had become irresistible.
Kate and Eugene didn't really need a large house, but they
built one anyway. Kate had managed to save some money from
61
THE BENDING CROSS
Debs' salary, and she inherited a sizeable amount from an aunt
in Louisville. They spent four thousand dollars for a double lot
in one of the wealthiest sections of town, North Eighth street,
where Kate wanted to live. Debs himself drew up the plans for
the house, which was disjointed, substantial, ugly, with gables
that seemed to burgeon unbidden from other gables. The Debs'
home, an architectural copy of the typical expensive house in
the Midwest, quickly became a local showplace. Kate was de-
lighted with its pretentious size and furnishings. Each room had
a fireplace of blue tile-in the parlor and library the tile was
carved and the mantles were San Domingo mahogany. Those
two rooms were finished last because the mahogany was late in
arriving. Kate promptly decreed that the parlor would be used
only on special occasions, so the library became the living room.
Debs had some shelves built into an upstairs bedroom and
D;l oved his books there.
James Whitcom.b Riley was one of the first and most frequent
guests in the new house. The friendship of Riley and Debs had
ripened, and Riley had written a second poem, "Them Flowers,"
to Debs. Riley's presence in Terre Haute could be detected
easily; the number of children around the Debs' house doubled.
They wouldn't even wait until a proper hour, but crowded into
the front bedroom-soon known as the Riley Room-long before
Riley a wakened in the morning.
Riley, on the rare occasions when he found himself alone,
would wander into Debs' study and give private performances
of his most cherished r61es. The two sentimental men would sit
for hours, mocking, orating, laughing, crying, weaving from
their lavender memories a blissful childhood without poverty,
frozen ears, or pain. The friendship of Debs and Riley was due,
perhaps, to their common ability to create a Utopia, and then
believe in their creation. Riley actually lived in this dreamland,
this Heavenly City of his poetry. Debs knew the sordid truth,
but he forgot it in the company of the poet, and they wandered
barefooted through the dusty paths down to the Ole Swimmin'
Hole, where there were no insects and the water was clear as a
mll'ror.
Often, when Riley was in Terre Haute, Daniel brought over a
bottle of wine from the store, causing Kate to fret at the re-
alization that Riley occasionally missed his performance at the
Opera House after these parties. A whimsical version of one
celebration was set down in a letter from Riley to his friend and
partner Bill N ye:
Have latterly returned from a brief visit to Debs, at Terre
Haute, who wants me to remind you of him in a taking way.
Mind. I say a brief visit-for. first dash out of box, he must drive
out to that blessed little vineyard where they serve you, out
under the trellis, with such tantalizing lunch, one must needs
handcuff one's appetite, else plunge headlong into their seduc-
tive wines-made while you wait, by the gifted old man, who
readily accomplishes his hellish purpose with one hand tied be-
hind him. Need I dwell on the picture? I deem not by a dam
sight ..
Riley, Ingersoll, a few personal friends and relatives in Terre
Haute, formed Debs' only contact with the world outside the
labor movement. He was a vivid conversationalist, but he
shrank from formal society and had never learned to dance. His
leisure evenings being few, he spent them with people he knew
and liked. Every Sunday he went to his parents' home, where he
and Daniel recited.poetry and discussed Hugo's Lea Miaboblea.
Debs also studied Shakespeare, history, science, but many of his
tastes were less discriminating-he reveled in mawkiSh doggerel,
and Negro dialect jokes by the page found their way into The
Maga:r:ine. The shelves in the second floor study held technical
books on railroading, bulky reports on labor conditions by the
sta te and Federal governments, French and German
together with. the worst poetry being written in this country and
newspaper clippings about circus freaks.
Eugene Debs was a very considerate husband-he never
raised his voice in anger-but Kate tried to leave him alone
when he was writing. Oratory came much easier to him;
efforts to piece together an article always reminde4 him of
Jamey Riley's remark: "Writing poetry is like giving birth to a
rough-shod colt." Debs would fret and pace the floor trying to
shape the ideas into a pattern; then he would sit down at his
desk and write for hours.
THE BENDING CROSS
Often an idea came to him after he had gone to bed. He tossed
and turned until he put it into words, then he arose, lit the gas
burner, and began to write. Kate usually awakened to gaze with
pride and amusement at her husband, sitting at his desk scrib-
bling frantically, gold eye-glasses pushed down on his nose, his
nightgown billowing in the draught across the floor. Kate
thought that "some of the things he has written that way in the
middle of the night, have been the best and brightest of his
works." When he had finished, he returned to bed and fell asleep
at once.
[ 2 ]
DURING the early spring of 1889, Debs worked frantically to
bring his federation plan to fruition. His own union had over-
whe1mingly endorsed his proposal, and he was confident that
the rank and file in every Brotherhood favored joint action. But
this enthusiasm could wane rapidly unless it were harnessed to
a concrete program. The moment had arrived for decisive action
-the result hung in the balance. And Debs was determined that
his labor of three years would not be wasted. The proposed
federation became the main theme in all of his speeches. He
wrote countless editorials on the subject for The Magazine.
Debs proved, in his efforts to federate the railroad unions.
that he was adept at the strategy of leading men. Not only did
he muster every argument that might appeal to the railroaders,
he also kept careful track of the developments in each Brother-
hood and set the pace of the entire campaign. It seemed certain
that the Switchmen and the Brakemen, two crafts that were
relatively unskilled and recently organized, would promptly
join any federation. But Debs, who had helped to found both of
these unions, preferred not to leave their allegiance in dou bt. He
gladly accepted an invitation to speak at the national conven-
tion of the Brakemen in 1888 because it seemed an excellent
chance to gain recruits for his program. The opening offered him
was further improved by the remarks of Grand Master S. E.
Wilkinson: "On my left sits our godfather, Eugene V. Debs.
. . . He was our friend when we most needed a friend, and you
and I in our life will never be able to repay him for what he has
done for us and for the benefit of our Brotherhood." Debs, seeing
the advantage that he held, quickly made his plea for COmmon
action:
Upon an hands and in all directions laboring men are organizing.
Organizing for what? Organizing for mutual protection; or-
ganizing in order that they may demand and receive an honest
day's wages for an honest day's work. . .. When . . . we
come in contact with a narrow minded, bigoted and infamous
railroad official, who will not accord us our common rights,
then I am in favor of strikes. Why, my friends, there is not a star
or a stripe in our national flag that does not tell of a strike; not
one. From Lexington, from Concord. all along the track of gloom
and of glory clear down to Yorktown, is one succession of strikes
for liberty and independence. . . .
Debs then stressed the importance of "federation for mutual
benefit. (Great applause) Not for the purpose of fostering or en-
couraging strikes, but to avert them. (More applause) ...
And if a strike should come, then I believe that out from the
camp of the federated brotherhoods Perry's message will be sent.
~ have met the enemy and they are ours.' (Great cheering)"
The leaders of the Engineers and the Conductors were bitterly
opposed to co-operation. with the other unions,' but they were
faced by growing opposition within their crafts. Indignation at
the no-strike policy and strikebreaking actions of the Order of
Railway Conductors had prompted the formation of a dual
union, or second organization in the craft, the Brotherhood
of Railway Conductors. Debs hailed this event with "undis-
guised satisfaction": ''It voices sentiments of harmony and
unity, and strengthens faith that the day is not distant, when all
the organizations of railway employes will be united in the bonds
of federation to promote the welfare of each and all," George W.
Howard, who resigned a supervisory job with the San Diego
Street Car Company to become head of the Brotherhood of
Conductors, was widely known among railroaders, having been
at one time a Division Superintendent on the Ohio & Missis-
sippi. He was flighty and unclear in his loyalties, but had a fine
speaking voice, knowledge of the industry, and was known to
favor federation.
Even among the Engineers the unity movement found
iul support. John A. Hill, editor of The Locomotive Engineer, had
.supported the Burlington strike and advocated joint action
among the Brotherhoods. Hill also greatly admired Eugene
Debs, of whom he wrote: "His editorials are the ablest and more
widely read than those of any' labor organ in America." The
efforts of Hill, Debs, and several others were convincing many
engineers of the need for federation. P. M. Arthur began to feel
:rather insecure on his throne and was less outspoken in his
tempt for other unions. Debs confidently predicted that the
Brotherhood of Engineers would soon join a federation. He also
thought that the Order of Conductors, meeting opposition
within its own ranks and losing members to Howard's dual
ganization, would be forced to repeal its no-strike clause and
co-operate with the other unions.
Important men in every Brotherhood were calling for feder-
ation, and they all looked to Debs for leadership. They had only
one question: Is the time ripe? Debs said Yes. Since 1885 he had
been working for this moment. Now it had come. Two or three
victories for the proposed federation and both the engineers and
the Conductors would be forced to join. On June 8, 1889, nine
men met in Chicago, the three top officers of the Firemen, the
Brakemen, and the Switchmen. A committee was chosen to draft
a constitution, including Debs for the BLF. Three days later the
plan was complete.
The new federation would be called the Supreme Council of
the United Orders of Railway Employees. Any grievance
mitted for settlement had to be accepted by a unanimous vote
of the Supreme Council, which would then take all steps
sary to settle the dispute. In case a strike was required, all of the
affiliated crafts on the struck system would be ordered off the
job and would walk out together. The goal sounded simple:
4'MUTU AL JUSTICE."
The Supreme Council won every battle during its first year.
and it did not order a single strike. The railroads, confronted by
a united labor movement, now took a very conciliatory attitude.
which showed itself in every dispute. The Queen and Crescent
tried to discharge all union conductors. After a meeting with the
rHE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS fJ7
Supreme Council, the railroad's president agreed to reinstate the
men who had been fired. An improved contract was negotiated
for the switchmen in Pittsburgh. The Ohio & Mississippi granted
seniority and a wage increase. The railroad workers had 'never
won such gains in the past. Every grievance was settled to the
satisfaction of the employees. United action was putting money
in the workers' pockets. Debs jubilantly wrote of this record;
"It inspires confidence; it silences doubts, and presages 'the
good time coming' when strikes s1uill forever disappear, and a
reign of good feeling exist between the railroad employer and
employe."
Debs felt both satisfaction and pride in the developments of
that year. An honest, likeable young Irishman named Sylvester
Keliher took the lead in organizing the Brotherhood of Railway
Car Men among the repair crews. A Brotherhood of Telegra-
phers was founded in opposition to the Order of Railway Teleg-
raphers, a conservative, nonstriking order. L. W. Rogers, a
consistent spokesman for unity. was elected editor of the Brake-
men's Journol. George Howard's Brotherhood of Conductors
joined the Supreme Council. The Order of Railway Conductors
deposed its former Grand Chief and repealed its no-strike clause,
prompting Debs to advocate an immediate merger of the two
organizations of conductors. Even the Engineers began to re-
treat; they repealed their discriminatory clause against members:
of the BLF, and held a tumultuous debate before deciding to
postpone entrance into the Supreme Council. And Debs con-
stantly tried to force the issue: " the B. of L.E., in case of
trouble with a. corporation, is not strong enough under all cir-
cumstances to 'go it alone: and engineers know that such exi-
gencies do sometimes arise when the united voice and strength
of all are required to secure simple justice."
The continued isolation of the Engineers was not the only
problem. A heated jurisdictional fight had started between the
Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association and the Brotherhood of
Brakemen, who had changed their name to the Brotherhood of
Railroad Trainmen and begun to' organize switchmen. At the
meeting of the Supreme Council in June, 1890, Debs moved that
each order be forced to limit its organizing to the craft over
6S
THE BENDING CROSS
which it hadjurisdictioil. He hoped that soon all of the Brother-
hoods would merge into a single organization, so he desperately
tried to eliminate factional strife, but his motion was defeated.
The Supreme Council also had constant trouble because the
Brotherhoods refused to admit Negro members. Many Southern
railroads consistently pitted the Negro and white workers
against each other, and the unions. instead of accepting the
Negroes as equal members, satisfied their prejudices by trying
to drive the Negro workers off their jobs. The Brotherhood of
Trainmen even submitted a grievance to the Supreme Council
regarding the employment of Negro switchmen on the Houston
and Texas Central. The Council asked the railroad to discharge
the Negroes, but met with a flat refusal.
Debs was not present when the Supreme Council considered
this complaint, but he would have opposed their action. He was
trying to bring together all of the railroad workers-Negroes,
Catholics, Protestants, atheists, foreign-born. H a man worked
on the railroad, he should be in a Brotherhood. Debs ,was sure,
in January, 1891, that there would be a bitter fight ~ i t the
corporations: "Workingmen are now demanding in Amer-
ica ... their fair share of the wealth they create. Do the
capitalists hear the demand? Yes. Do they heed it? No. Hence
the coming conflict .... " The railroad workers could win their
rights, thought Debs, only if ,they stood together. Every move-
ment to divide them should be vigorously fought. When an anti-
Catholic organization, the American Protective Association,
began to split lodges and create enmity on the basis of religion,
Debs was furious. His mother had been a Catholic when she
came to America, and Terre Haute at that time was dominated
by another anti-Catholic society, the Know-Nothings. Although
Daisy had not remained in the Church after she ceased to be-
lieve in its doctrines, she had gained an understanding and dis-
lik,e of religious bigotry, and Daniel also had defended absolute
freedom of belief. So now Eugene Debs wrote a forceful attack
on the attempt to split the labor movement along religious lines:
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen is not an organiza-
tion of religious fanatics and bigots. It is not an organization
which has a purpose of collecting fagots to burn heretics, to
erect wheels to break their bones, or obtain thumb-screws to
elicit
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen tolerates, without
question, aU religious opinions, and the locomotive fireman, a
member of the brotherhood, who, by word or deed, introduces
creed questions in the lodge, or who uses the order in any way to
promote religious dissension, is a deadly enemy of the order and
should be forthwith expelled
I 3 ]
DEBS knew that there would always be problems, and he was
confident that the workers would find the right solutions. He
had joined an organization of two thousand members and seen
it grow to twenty thousand. He had taken over a magazine with
thirty-five hundred subscribers and was now printing thirty-
three thousand copies each month. During his term in office the
Brotherhood had established itself financially, had sought out
the true principles of trade unionism. The movement for feder-
ation had grown from a sickly infant to an irresistible giant.
Debs began to feel that his work in the Brotherhood was fin-
ished The expansion of the organization had made it necessary
for him to spend more and more time on routine work. Kate was
dissatisfied because he spent so much time away from home and
because he was wrecking, his health. So Debs decided to quit.
He announced his" retirement in the lead editorial of The
Magazi1U!, January, 1891. His term in office did not expire for
another two years, but he wanted to give his Brothers ample
time to choose a successor. The news created quite a stir in
Terre Haute. The local Gazette immediately sent a reporter to
interview Debs, who said that the drudgery of the job was be-
coming tiresome, and that he longed for larger fields. He ex-
pected to resign within a year. While admitting his intention of
moving to New York City, where one of his sisters, Mrs. Emma
Maillaux, now lived, he refused to tell his plans for fear "that
premature publication might injure his colleagues in the new
venture. He did, however, clearly hint at the general nature of
his intentions: "I think there isa field for a labor paper, covering
the whole range of organized labor, not of one special trade or
70
THE BENDING CROSS
class, but in a broad sense taking in the whole of the labor world;
something that will reach the masses."
Debs was clearly qualified to manage such a periodical. He
even knew how to make it profitable. His decade on TM Maga-
zine had taught him advertising, circulation, printing, editing;
and his experience extended beyond his work on TM Magazine.
In 1889 he had joined four other men to establish the Terre
Haute Daily N which intended to bring accurate news to his
fellow townsmen; the pressure of other duties had soon forced
him to quit the project. The American Press Association, which
supplied syndicated material to small newspapers, had offered
him a job as general manager at forty-five hundred dollars a
year, but he refused.
But his real value was as an editorial writer, a field in which
the other labor journalists freely acknowledged his
He always seemed to know what the workers were thinking,
what they were willing to read, what they wanted to hear. He
had come straight from their ranks to his job in the Brother-
hood, and, instead of losing contact with the rank and file, he
had deepened and broadened his friendships among the rail-
roaders. As an editor, he could carefully search out the flaw in
the enemy's argument, then rip it apart with one well-placed,
caustic comment. This was the method of the squirrel rifle; at
other times his articles resembled a whole battery of shotguns.
His Wrath poured into deafening, unrestrained condemnation,
which flattened the opposition and then destroyed the corpses.
Debs' partisanship was tempered, however, by reflection and
by conscious purpose. His demands for the eight-hour day,
higher wages, the abolition of convict labor and company stores,
were bolstered by a careful use of statistics from government
reports. He also brought to his task a deep understanding of the
traps that awaited the labor movement. He was not a blind
supporter of every trade union policy. His scorn for P. M. Arthur
of the Engineers rivaled his attacks on such financiers as George
M. Pullman and Jay Gould. Even within the BLF, Debs pub-
licly criticized those theories and actions which he found dis-
tasteful For instance, in 1891 a meeting of railroaders in Kansas
City resolved against any reduction in freight or passenger rates
on the raihoads. De bs promptly denounced the resolution as an
attempt "to form an alliance, offensive and defensive with
organ.ized greed and capitalized fraud, in opposition ;0 the
people's demand for equity and justice." Throughout his life,
Debs opposed every labor-management agreement to Heece the
consumers.
[ J. ]
ALTHOUGH Debs still clung to the standard of the Democratic
Party, he carefully watched the growth of the political reform
movement. Since the Civil War there had been frequent rum-
blings among the farmers of the West and South. In the early
1870's the Grangers had demanded and won railroad regulation
in several states, while in 1878 the Greenback Party polled a
million votes. The next decade witnessed the rise of the Farmers'
Alliances, which elected two United States Senators and eight
Congressmen in 1890. This farmers' revol4 through all of its
ebbs andHows,had revolved around a few demands: free coinage
of silver, the issuance of greenbacks, public regulation or even
public ownership of the railroads and telegraph, a fair tax
system, the abolition of privately owned national banks. In
May, 1891, all of these planks were adopted by a convention of
the reform elements in Cincinnati, and demands were added for
the eight-hour day and universal suHrage. When this convention
also took steps to found the People's Party, or Populists, Debs
took an alert but neutral position in The Magazine. His article
opposed government ownership of the railroads and criticized
the free-silver panacea, but it also pointed out that the Populists
might prove to be the party which would "discard class
legislation and inaugurate a reign of justice."
Debs' political views had been deeply affected by two con-
temporary books, Laurence Gronlund's The Cooperative Com-
monwealth and Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. r o n ~
lund's thesis was simple: A society based on co-operation should
be substituted for a society based on competitioIl.. Believing that
the co-operative commonwealth would be reached by a gradual
extension of state activity, Gronlund wrote that such theories
72
THE BENDING CROSS
as Henry George's single-tax were "very far out on the road to
Socialism." The perfect society would arrive as soon as all
political offices were made elective and the recall, initiative, and
referendum were made universal.
Gronlund had expressed his views in a tedious political trea":
tise; Bellamy fashioned similar notions into a novel about Julian
West, a young New Englander who fell asleep in 1887 and did
not wake up until !WOO A.D. West found himself in a marvellous
America. Poverty, strikes, war, every selfish sentiment and ugly
sight, had disappeared, because the government had taken the
country's factories out of private hands and was operating them-
for the good of the people. Public demand for Looking Backward
was so great that the printer could not keep up with it. Bellamy's
main plank, the nationalization of industry, stimulated a new
political movement, the Nationalist clubs, which began in
Boston and spread overnight across the country. Terence
Powderly, Sam Gompers, and P. J. McGuire all announced their
suppOrt. Volume I of a new magazine, The Nationalist, came off
the _press in 1889. Debs promptly subscribed for the magazine
and wrote a lengthy review of the book: "Looking Backward
. outlines a possibility, or rather many possibilities, some of
which are to be accomplished facts a century in advance of 2000
A.D. Trusts will go, syndicates and monopolies will follow. Land-
grabbers will be made to relax their grasp upon lands. Labor is
organizing for such work, and those who relish good reading
should read Looking Backward."
Debs' influence, already great, continued to climb. George
Howard, in September, 1890, told the Brotherhood of Con-
ductors: ''The majority of our successes for the past year was
brought about through Eugene V. Debs, .. that fearle&'3
champion of the rights of organized labor under any and all
circumstances." The Railway Service Gazette of Toledo, Ohio,
suggested Debs as a candidate for President of the United
States, saying that he was "absolutely above reproach." John
A. Hill, hearing of Debs' proposed retirement, wrote in the
Locomotive Engineer that Debs was ''by far the ablest labor
speaker and writer in America" and then added: ''To the hon-
esty, -intelligence, ability and untiring energy -of Eugene V.
Debs, the B. of L.F. owes its present prosperity, and probably
its existence, and we do not doubt but that the members of the
order give him full credit."
Personal praise was as gratifying to Debs as to other men, but
he was even more pleased by the success of the federation plan.
The Order of Conductors endorsed federation by the overwhelm-
ing vote of 298 to seven; it seemed a matter of weeks before a
united organization of conductors would belong to the Supreme
Council. The Order of Railway Telegraphers repealed its no-
strike rule, and the two Orders of telegraphers immediately
merged; they too were certain to apply for membership iri the
Supreme Council. The sole hold-out was the Brotherhood of
Engineers, and the growing pressure would soon force them to
comply. Eugene V. Debs was near victory.
[ 5 ]
. THEN the Supreme Council collapsed. It had been founded on a
basis of common interest. Eugene Debs, the chief architect, had
believed that the railroad workers could improve their condi-
tions by uniting against the companies. All of the Brotherhoods
had won unprecedented gains. But these gains were not enough
for some of the leaders, who thrust aside the common interest to
promote their selfish advantage.
An insignificant fight between two men grew into a disastrous
conflict within the federation. F. M. McNerney, a yardmaster
on the Galena division of the Chicago & Northwestern, dis-
charged a switchman named James E. Crowe for alleged in-
subordination and profanity. Complications arose because Mc-
Nerney was a member of the Trainmen, and Crowe belonged to
the Switchmen. For more than a year the jurisdictional quarrel
between these two unions, both affiliated to the Supreme Coun-
cil, had been dormant. Now it again flared into open conflict.
The Switchmen asked the superintendent of the Galena Division
to reinstate Crowe. When he refused, they called a local strike.
This pressure forced the superintendent to reverse his previous
decision. He now fired McNerney and made Crowe the new
yardmaster.
THE BENDING CROSS
The Trainmen immediately called a special session 0 f the
Supreme Council and submitted McNerney's discharge as a
grievance. The Switchmen objected. The representatives of the
Firemen and the Conductors. instead of trying to mediate the
dispute. foolishly took sides. The meeting soon lost any judicial
tone. Twelve opinionated, leather-throated men began to shriek
at each other across the table. Words like "scab" were used with
alarming frequency. And Eugene Debs, with a blithe indiffer-
ence to the possible outcome of this quarreling, joined the fray
with the others. Finally the Trainmen made the threats a
reality-they moved the dissolution of the Supreme Council.
Debs took the lead in defeating this motion, and the mere fact
that it had been made was a sobering influence. The Trainmen
agreed to withdraw the grievance, and the meeting adjourned in
a chorus of apologies.
A month later, May 14, 1891, the Chicago & Northwestern
Railroad discharged all of its employees who belonged to the
Switchmen and replaced them with members of the Trainmen.
Since the circumstances indicated a conspiracy between the
officials of the railroad and the Trainmen, the Supreme Council
was summoned to consider the offense. Debs insisted that the
Switchmen should be restored to their jobs, but the Supreme
Council was unable to settle the dispute. He had no doubt, even
before an investigation, that the Trainmen were guilty of treach-
ery. To attack their action would result in the disruption of the
Supreme Council; to ignore it would equally disrupt the Su-
preme Council and also would be unjust to the Switchmen. In
either"case. a project on which he had lavished energy and de-
votion for six years was doomed to a severe setback. And Debs,
if he were honest, must have realized that his own lack of o r ~
sight at the April meeting was responsible, to a slight degree, for
the catastrophe.
In the June issue of The Magazine, Debs flatly charged that
the Trainmen had conspired with the Chicago & Northwestern
to destroy the Switchmen. It was a bitter hour for federation.
said the article, as bitter an hour as Valley Forge had been for
the American Revolution, but the annual meeting of the Su-
preme Council on June 15 would solve the dilemma. Although
Debs was reeling under this latest example of human selfishness
and stupidity, he still voiced his confidence that the federation
would be preserved: "If the bolts of corporation vengeance can
be stayed, federation alone is equal to the requirement. I be-
lieve federation has come to stay, and believing that means will
be devised to strengthen and perpetuate this bulwark of work-
. ingmen's rights, I close this communication."
The June 15 meeting opened in an atmosphere of extreme
hostility. Again threats and profanity were exchanged during the
brief session, which ended with the appointment of a trial com-
mittee to conduct hearings and present a report. The hearings
of the trial committee established the facts beyond question.
The head of the Trainmen, S. E. Wilkinson, had met with an
executive of the Chicago & Northwestern, who said that he in-
tended to rehire the yardmaster discharged in April. If the
Switchmen struck, would the Trainmen furnish men? No, said
Wilkinson, we won't scab. Then the railroad executive asked if
the Trainmen would furnish replacements if he'fired all m;!mbers
of the Switchmen. Wilkinson said nothing. On May 14, five
hundred Switchmen were discharged. Wilkinson furnished re-
placements. It was also shown that, before May 14, an official
of the Trainmen had toured the East, telling all unemployed
switchmen in his union to report to Chicago.
The Supreme Council reconvened in Terre Haute on June 29
to consider the results of the investigation. Eugene Debs was
determined upon two g<?als: to secure justice for the Switchmen,
and to preserve and strengthen the federation. This program
seemed feasible as the meeting opened. The twelve delegates
united in their appreciation of the Supreme Council; even a
representative of the Trainmen declared: "I would willingly
make any sacrifice to preserve this Federation." The Trainmen's
delegates, in a routine step, objected to the entire proceedings.
But, they added, if the Supreme Council insisted on its authority
in the matter, it should punish only the officers of the Trainmen
and not the entire organization.
Eugene Debs clearly favored the punitive course recom-
mended by the Trainmen. He claimed that the Supreme Council
had power "to inquire into any case that touches the welfare
76
THE BENDING CROSS
of the organizations here represented. And the crime of which
the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen has been found guilty
deserves the severest condemnation of every laboring man. No
punishment could be too severe for such an act." On the other
hand, said Debs, "I confess that I am not ready to vote, for the
simple reason that I do not fully realize the effect of the vote.
not only on the B. of R.T., but on all labor organizations. Is it
right, is it just to place a stigma on twenty thousand men be-
cause of the action of five hundred of their number?" Debs
wanted to return the disputed jobs to the Switchmen, and to em
ploy punitive action against the leaders of the Trainmen, but to
make certain that the Trainmen remained in the Supreme
CounciL
This intention was repeatedly defeated by Ft-ank Sargent,
president of the BLF, who was presiding at the session. Sargent,
on three occasions, ruled that the Supreme Council had no
power over individuals, and that it could only deal with the
Trainmen as an organization. Finally a motion was made to
accept the report of the trial committee, which harshly con
demned the Trainmen. It was carried by the combined votes of
the Firemen, the Conductors, and the Switchmen, with the
Trainmen opposing it. .
The full significance of Frank Sargent's earlier ruling now
became evident. The only punishment open to the Supreme
Council under Sargent's interpretation-the expulsion of the
Trainmen-was recommended by the Switchmen. This motion
was exactly what Debs had tried to avoid. The issue now was
the preservation of the Supreme Council, and on that issue
Debs was willing to use any argument or trick to carry his point.
He carefully began to delay the meeting, making the first in a
series of cool, reasoned pleas: ''This is a grave matter and must
not be acted upon without due deliberation. I do not recede one
iota from my position as to the guilt of certain parties, but I do
not see how such extreme measures can. be adopted without
doing a grave injustice to the many innocent members. If the
B. of R.T. is expelled, it will arouse a feeling that will go forward
to disintegration. We will only spread the fire that was kindled
on the Northwestern, and destruction is inevitable." .
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS
77
As man after man-lIrtlse to speak his mind. it became clear
that a majority favored the expulsion of the Trainmen. Even
J. J. Hanwilian, Debs' colleague in the BLF, and George How-
ard of the Conductors appeared to favor that course. It seems
certain that Debs became increasingly desperate. Perhaps his
mind journeyed over the entire history of the movement to
federate the railroad unions. the beginning in 188.5 when only a
handful of radicals dared to advocate united action, the slow
growth of favorable sentiment, the leap forward during the
Burlington strike. the day in 1889 when the Supreme Council
was founded. By 1890 the various Brotherhoods in several cities
were holding joint meetings; an actual merger into one great
organization seemed a distinct possibiJity.
During those six years, in spite of disappointments and the
grinding labor, Eugene Debs had ,remained faithful to his goal.
He had neglected his wife' and parents, traveled a dozen times
from coast to coast, pleaded ~ n threatened and used trickery.
He had helped to build a mighty structure oJ friendship and
brotherhood. Now it was being destroyed by one sudden. over-
whelming blow. The treachery of the Trainmen, followed by the
recklessness of the other delegates to the. Supreme Council,
threatened disaster to every man who worked on the railroads.
So Debs again rose and made an oblique plea. with himself as
the scapegoat: uThe penalty is altogether too severe. When this
came up I did not think too severe a penalty couid be inflicted,
but I can see now that the penalty proposed, expulsion. or even
a great deal less than expulsion, would be too severe. The
Switchmen on the Northwestern have been fully vindicated by
the action of this Council, and the perpetrators of this crime
have been condemned. The expulsion of the Trainmen would not
assist the Switchmen on the Northwestern. I believe the penalty
is too severe and should be voted down:'
But there was no sentjment for compromise among the dele
gates. They were determined to carry the matter to its final,
illogical conclusion. These hardfisted, headstrong men, who had
been trained in the merciless battles against the corporations.
were not amenable to control. The argument went on, rising
to the crisis that Debs had feared. In a final, hopeless effort.
THE BENDING CROSS
Debs made another speech and moved adjournment. Not a
man in the meeting was willing to second his motion, and it died.
Next the motion to expel the Trainmen was put to a vote.
Debs' arguments had persuaded J. J. Hannahan to change his
position, and the result was i e ~ The three representatives each
of the Firemen and the Trainmen voted against expulsion, the
Switchmen and the Conductors voted for it. The Trainmen
could not be expelled. Debs had no illusion of having won the
battle. Such an issue, as Debs knew, could only be settled by
agreement on a solution, not by a deadlock.
But even the relative victory that Debs had scored was im-
mediately upset. The chairman of the meeting. according to the
bylaws of the Supreme Council, had .no right to vote except in
case of a tie. Frank Sargent's vote was therefore invalid. The
Trainmen were expelled by the margin of one doubtful vole.
The spirit of strict justice, justice that became unjust, had pre-
vailed in the meeting. All railroad workers would suffer because
six men were determined to plIDish the leaders of the Trainmen.
Then followed another blow. The Order of Railway Con-
ductors and the Order of Railway Telegraphers, both of which
had applied for admission to the Supreme Council, withdrew
their applications because of the action taken against the Traht-
men.
Thus hit by a series of reversals, Eugene Debs again proved
his dogged devotion to principle. He had real cause for grief and
anger at the events of the previous six weeks, which had turned
complete victory into a stunning setback. But, instead of yield-
ingto barren resentment, he calmly prepared to regain the
ground that had been lost. Convinced that the existence of the
Council was now a barrier to a federation which would embrace
all railroad unions, he moved that the Council dissolve. Han-
nahan seconded his motion. ExactJy the same men who had
voted to expel the Trainmen, by some perverse logic, spOke
against the dissolution of the CounciL Debs thought they were
wrong-the Council now contained only three Brotherhoods
and four refused to join-but he agreed to postpone any decision
tmtil all the railroad unions had held their autumn conventions.
The next issue of The j[ agazine carried a complete account by
Debs of the Northwestern conspiracy, including a principle
which had found new emphasis in the past few weeks: "We bank
not on the common sense of officials, but of the rank and file."
Invited in September to address the convention of the
Brotherhood of Railroad Conductors, Debs flatly told the dele-
gates that there should not be two organizations of railroad men
in the same craft. Both orders of conductors now had the same
purposes, which could be better accomplished if they would
merge. Then the cOnvention, on George Howard's recommen-
dation, elected a committee to negotiate with the Order of Con-
ductors. Within a month, the two organizations had merged, and
George Howard had retired from the labor movement. One of
the terma of the merger was tha t the new ORC would work for a
general federation of all railroad workers.
Debs was also heartened by other events. The telegraphers
united into a single order. L. W. Rogers, editor of the Railroad
Trainmen'a Journal, wrote a two-page editorial condemning the
r6le of his union in the Northwestern conspiracy. The call for
the 1891 AFL convention, issued by Sam Gompers, contained a
powerful demand for labor unity: "On every hand we find or-
ganization and combination on the part of those' who own OJ,'
control wealth, and using their possessions to crush out the
liberties, to stifle the voice, and ,pervert the rights of the toiling
masses. . These can only be successfully met
and coped with by a compact and' thorough organization of the
wage-working classes of our country.'-
But unity was not to be quickly achieved. When the Train-
men's convention met in October, the delegates accepted with-
out question Wilkinson's denial of any conspiracy with the
Chicago & Northwestern. L. W. Rogers immediately resigned
his job as editor of the Trainmen's Journal to found the Age oj
Labor, an independent labor paper. George Howard became
vice-president of a co-operative building and loan society in
Chicago. Other advocates of federation were leaving the railroad
unions. Federation had suffered greatly in the minds of the rank
and file. EverybOdy still recognized the power of united
80
THE BENDING CROSS
even the BRT. when it was forced to strike on the Canadian
Pacific. ran to the other Brotherhoods for help and got it-but
there was widespread cynicism and mutual distrust.
Realizing that the struggle for federation would be a long
fight, Debs began to slacken his breakneck pace. He spent more
time reading Ingersoll's orations, developed an interest in Walt
Whitman, again invited Jamey Riley to visit Terre Haute. His
main job now was writing editorials for The Magazine, so he
lavished care on each. Most of them were about federation, but
he also wrote a careful analysis of several compulsory arbitra-
tion laws. The supporters of these laws believed "that strikes
do no good, that they are productive of evil," but, Debs said,
"such persons know absolutely nothing of the history of or-
ganized labor in the United States or elsewhere." In eighty-five
years the hours of labor had been reduced from fourteen hours a
day to nine, and in each case the reduction had been won by a
strike. Every advance in the wages of workers had been won by
a strike. So the right to strike must not be infringed:
What is a strike? The answer is war. And what is war? Re-
sistance to wrong. Such is the history of war in the United
States. To say there have been unjust, unnecessary wars, begs
the question. Who is the craven that would have the constitu-
tion of the United States so amended that congress should never
declare war? And who but an enemy of organized labor would
the enactment of a law that so much as squints at
depriving labor of the only weapon it possesses of
maintaining Its rights against those whose policy. is oppression?
When the annual session of the Supreme Council was con-
vened in Chicago, June 1892, only the Firemen and the
Switchmen were present. Debs immediately moved that the or-
ganization be dissolved to make way for a new and better
federation. The motion carried, and Eugene Debs buried his
first major dream, an apparent failure.
[ 6 ]
THE NEXT MONTH The Magazine carried a full-page advertise-
ment for the E. V. Debs Publishing Company of Terre Haute.
Several technical books about ra.ilroadB were already being
offered for sale by the new company. Debs was preparing to
leave the BLF, but his resignation was meeting strong resist-
ance. He had unanimous support in his own union, and the
failure of the Supreme Council had damaged his prestige only
in the Brotherhood of Trainmen. Sam Gompers had written
asking him to remain in the labor movement: "Somewhere I
read you contemplated starting a labor paper, and while I ap-
preciate the great services rendered by self-sacrificing men in
that field and can unPerstand what influence you would wield
with your trenchant pen, still judging from the past and the
experience of others I am inclined to the belief that your op-
portunity in and through the Bro'd is much better and more
advantageous to all concerned." Debs had great respect for
Gompers' judgment and that letter made him pause and re-
consider.
Then came another strike which removed all hesitation from
his mind. New York State had passed a law establishing the ten-
hour day in all industries, but made no attempt to enforce it.
The switchmen in Buffalo, still working twelve to fourteen hours
a day, tried to negotiate a reduction of hours, but the employers
reiused to meet with the Switchmen. Hoping to compel the state
to enforce its ten-hour law, five hundred switchmen called' a
strike. The governor, however, chose to send six thousand state
troops to Buffalo to crush the walkout. The Switchmen im-
mediately summoned the officers of the other Brotherhoods to
Buffalo. P. M. Arthur refused to attend the meeting. The others
went to Buffalo, and did nothing. Debs tried to persuade them
to back up the strike, but they refused. So Debs sardonically
wrote in The Magazine: "Some of the 'grand officers' responded.
They came at his call like homing doves, each with the message
under his wing that they 'had no grievance and wouldn't fight.' "
The strike ended in utter defeat. It also finalized the rupture
between Eugene Debs and the men who had been his associates
for seventeen years. '
Two weeks later Debs told the national BLF convention that
he was resigning from all connection with the Brotherhood:
I do this because it pleases me, and there is nothing that I
would not do, so far as human effort goes, to advance any move-
THE BENDING CROSS
roent to reach and rescue perishing humanity. I have a heart
for others and that is why I am in this work. When I see suffer-
ing me, I myself and so when I put forth my efforts
to relieve others, I am sImply helping myself. I do not consider
that I have made any sacrifice whatever; no man does unless he
violates his conscience. '
That speech. far from having the desired effect. strengthened the
delegates' resolve to keep their Secretary-Treasurer.
Debs had shown that he was a constructive and brilliant or-
ganizer as well as an agitator. He had inaugurated the policy of
bonding trade-union officials, in order to protect the organiza-
tion against embezzlement. Under his direction, the benefit sys-
tem had been firmly established and expanded. His skill in
negotiations was unquestioned. His prowess as a strike leader,
hinging on the ability to control large numbers of men and to
anticipate the enemy's tactics, amounted to genius. The con-
tents of The Magazine. in both scope and quality, had earned it
first place among the labor journals. Debs' tenure as a unionist-
seventeen years, including twelve as a top official-was exceeded
on the railroads only by P. M. Arthur.
But Debs' popula.rity rested, not so much on spectacular
achievements, as on constant service. This service was personal
and intimate. Many men did the big things occasionally-he
did the little things every day. When he was traveling with a
companion, he carried the heaviest grips, slept in the upper
berth, sat in the aisle seat. Men noticed that he never hurried a
waitress or a bellboy, never complained about a hotel room. If
there was not enough food to go around, Debs got the small
portion. He was always willing to give a loan to a down-and-
out railroader, and did not care whether it was repaid. Once he
heard that the lack of a good watch was blocking the promotion
of another fireman. That was easy enough to take care of, said
Debs, and handed the man his own. He had proved a thousand
times his willingness not merely to share sacrifice, but to exceed
it. So an attitude had developed toward Eugene Debs, an at-
titude of complete faith and devotion.
No candidate had ever been nominated against Debs and no
vote had ever been cast in opposition. Every year his popularity
THE RAILROAD BROTHERHOODS as
had grown. Now the delegates steadfastly refused to accept his
resignation. They voted him a leave of absence and two thou-
sand dollars for a trip to Europe. Debs refused. They came to
his hotel room in the middle of the night and begged him to run
for re-election. Debs refused. Finally he issued a statement
. which emphasized his fundamental opposition to the Brother-
hood's principle of craft unionism:
While I don't expect to disconnect myself from organized labor,
to continue in my present position would materially interfere
with my plans for the future. A life purpose of mine has been the
federation of railroad employees. To unify them into one great
body is my object, but I don't believe it can be done on the
present lines. Now the men are enrolled in l ~ [crafts] for
distinct departments. Class enrollment fosters class prejudices
and class selfishness, and instead of affiliating with each other,
there is a tendency to hold aloof from each other. Class organ-
ization is well enough, but they should be united when the time
comes for federation. With the present differences in organiza-
tion and differences among Grand Officers, federation is imprac-
ticable and impossible.
It has been my life's desire to unify railroad employees and to
eliminate the aristocracy of labor, which unfortunately exists,
and organize them so all will be on an equality. To this I am
going to tum my attention. I have as yet no plans formulated,
but they will come later, after a needed rest. These are my rea-
sons for declining re-election. To the firemen I have given my
best years, and naturally they will always be first in my thoughts
and always will have my best wishes for success in the future.
For another two days the delegates refused to accept his resig-
nation, in spite of his unqualified attack on the principles of the
Brotherhood. Then a compromise was reached. Debs quit as
Secretary-Treasurer. He agreed to continue as editor of The
Magazine on three conditions: he would have nothing to do with
finances, he would not be an officer of the Brotherhood, he
would be paid only nine hundred dollars a year. The delegates
accepted the first two conditions, but insisted on a salary of
three thousand. It was fixed at one thousand. .
Now Debs, with a clear mandate from the membership to
write anything he pleased, really unleashed his indignation.
THE BENDING CROSS
The lead article in the December issue was headed ''Farewell,
1892":
The old year bears away in its archives the switchmen's strike
at Buffalo. where organized labor was atruck down because o r ~
ganized labor was deaf to the appeals of organized labor for help.
That is the humiliating record 1892 takes with him. Organized
labor appealed to organized labor for support in a just cause
and secured oceans of sympathetic drool. Like the man in the
parable the switchmen asked for bread and were given only
stones or peanut shells. Bayonets and bullets, scabs and c ~
italists won a victory, rode rough shod over a principle which
must eventually triumph or labor's emancipation day will never
dawn.
Part II.
The American Railway Union
A strike is a practical protest, or a revolt, frequently suc-
cessful, against wrongs that may be unendurable.
It is resorted to only when rendered necessary
by the oppressive action. of capital, exer-
cised against the str.ikers or against
any portion of their brethren
with whom they have in-
terests or sympathies
in common.
JOHN SWINTON
CHAPTER 5
[ 1 ]
TI
PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1892 offered
little excitement in its early stages. when sparring re-
. volved around the tariff issue. Neither Benjamin Har-
rison nor Grover Cleveland was a dynamic figure. During his
Presidential tenure, Harrison had opened the pork barrel to the
veterans, signed the protectionist McKinley Tariff Act, and
kept the door ajar for the coinage of silver. Cleveland, although
known to be politically fearless and honest, was hobbled by
narrow understanding and no imagination. The trade unions
adhered rigidly to their nonpartisan policy and ignored the
political patty-cake of the campaign. until the two dramatic
strikes of July.
A handful of giant corporations, grown to maturity during the
decades since the Civil War, controlled state governments and
had an influential voice in Washington by 1892. All major
appointees were chosen from the business community. Court
decisions and new legislation were bought and sold. In the
United States Senate were men who had made fortunes in silver,
oil, transportation, timber, all types of manufacturing. This
political power had been freely nsed by the railroads during the
1877 strikes; now the silver kings and Henry Frick of the Car-
negie Steel Company underscored the earlier lesson for labor.
The skilled workmen at the Homestead, Pennsylvanla, works
of Carnegie Steel had long been represented by the Amalga-
mated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, one of the strong-
est unions in America. In the spring of 1892, negotiations for a
new contract deadlocked over the wage issue. The corporation,
although it had persuaded Congress to raise the tariff on steel
billets so that higher wages could be paid, insisted that wages
should be cut. The workers soon saw that the company's pri-
mary purpose was to wipe out their organization. Even before
87
88
THE BENDING CROSS
the old con tracthad expired, Henry Frick erected a high wooden
fence around the Homestead works, cut loopholes in it for rifles,
covered the top with barbed wire, and mounted searchlights on
several towers inside the grounds. On June 28, two days before
the contract expired, Frick locked out his men. He had already
hired three hundred Pinkerton agents to guard the entry of
blacklegs into" his factory. These Pinkertons were moved by
special train from New York to Ashtabula, Ohio, thence to
Youngstown, where they were loaded in two armored barges,
outfitted like a regular army, and towed up the Monongahela
River to Homestead. Although they had hoped to disembark
secretly. they were met at the landing by a huge throng of
armed strikers. Mter a pitched battle which lasted the entire
day, the invaders surrendered and were quickly escorted out of
town; three Pinkertons and seven workers were killed. Henry
Frick then telegraphed the governor" of Pennsylvania, and the
governor sent eight thousand state troops into Homestead.
Strikebreakers were brought into the plant under the protection
of the militia. The strike leaders were indicted for murder, ag.
gravated riot, conspiracy, and treason; the character of the
evidence against them became clear when they were all ac
quitted of every charge, but they were kept out of Homestead
until the strike was smashed. The lockout proved effective--by
November the union no longer existed at Homestead. Henry
Frick had proved that a modem corporation could destroy
with one stroke the strongest craft union in America.
Corporate power was again demonstrated at Coeur d'Alene,
Idaho, where the silver miners struck in protest against a wage
cut and lockout by the mine operators. The very day the militia
arrived in Homestead, July 11, a pitched battle was fought at
Coeur d'Alene between the union miners and a large force of
strikebreakers. Although the miners drove out the blacklegs and
seized the mine, their victory was frustrated by the intervention
of the governor, who declared martial law and secured Federal
troops from President Harrison. The Army moved swiftly and
ruthlessly to smash the strike. All known union men were ar
rested. Several hundred strikers were imprisoned for months in a
barbed-wire concentration camp, or bull pen, where they were
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION 89
starved and mistreated. Eighty-five miners were indicted for
contempt of court, and twelve were convicted.' These twelve
men were actually fort:unate for they were at least lodged 'in a
regular jail, while their fellows were housed like animals in the
bull pen. The Army took over the job of smashing the workers'
organization, and even prohibited the mines from hiring union-
ists. At Coeur d'Alene, as at Homestead, an open shop was es-
tablished, and the strikers were blacklisted throughout the
industry.
The Democrats carefully used these incidents to attack Har-
rison's administration. Seizing upon the fact that Frick was a
prominent Republican and that his firm had been Ii. chief bene-
ficiary under the McKinley Tariff, Cleveland called the Home-
stead massacre an example of "the tender mercy the working-
man receives from those made selfish and sordid by unjust
governmental favoritism." Debs, even more certain than in 1888
that Harrison was a tool of the corporations, again worked for a
Democratic .victory. He wrote dozens of letters to local unionists
urging support of Cleveland, and on his organizing trips he
seldom missed a chance to attack Harrison-. In November,
Grover Cleveland, with the active support of most union leaders,
was again sent to the White House. Many workers' votes abo
went to the People's Party, which polled 8 per cent of the total.
With more than a million votes in their first national effort, the
Populists became a definite threat to the old parties.
The events at Homestead and Coeur d'Alene and the Buffalo
switchmen's strike infuriated Debs. Month after month The
Magazine ripped into Pinkerton treachery and corporate greed.
After the Presidential election, Debs continued to call for
vigilance by the unions, and at the year's end he wrote:
If the year 1892 taught the workingmen any lesson worthy of
heed, it was that the capitalist class, like a devilfish, had grasped
them with its tentacles and was dragging them down to fathom-
less depths of degradation. To e s c ~ the prehensile clutch of
these monsters, constitutes a standmg challenge to organized
labor for 1893, and demands of workingmen an amount of sen-
tinel duty which must be performed if victory is to perch upon
their banners.
90
THE BENDING CROSS
This sentinel duty must be done politically, said the article, at
the ballot box and in the legislatures: government must no
longer serve as the guardian of the open shop. Debs also called
upon the workers to cast off "the leadership of men who from
any base ambition hold their positions to promote selfish ends
and aims," and to "unify upon all questions where rights are
involved."
The trade union leaders were forced, in spite of their private
desires, to make several gestures toward labor unity. Top of-
ficials in the Knights of Labor, now shrunk to a parody of its
former lustiness, and of the AFL met in Philadelphia and again
in St. Louis to consider joint action by the two orders. But the
Knights insisted on maintenance of their unions and on the
endorsement of the People's Party. The AFL denied both con-
ditions, and the project collapsed. In the railroad unions, popu-
lar insistence on harmony was strong enough to compel the
formation of a second alliance. The new plan, initiated by the
BLF, was a more cumbersome duplicate of the Supreme Coun-
cil. At a conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, it was endorsed by
the Firemen, Conductors, Trainmen, Switchmen, and Teleg-
raphers.
Although Debs gave editorial blessing to the Cedar Rapids
federation, he doubted its adequacy. More gradually than in
1873, but steadily, the .country was sliding into another depres-
sion. Twenty-eight banks suspended payment between Jan-
uary and April, another fifty-four in May, a hundred and eight-
een in June. The continued decline in the level of wholesale
prices, which had been falling almost constantly since 1865, in-
exorably squeezed the fa.rrners and industrialists. Debs knew
what that meant for railroaders: irregular work, wage cuts,
mass unemployment. Against this menace, the new federation
was a frail barrier. The Engineers and the Railway Carmen had
not joined. Jurisdictional strife was still rampant between the
Engineers and Firemen. The Trainmen were systematically
raiding both the Conductors and the Switchmen. The officials
whose treachery and bad judgment had wrecked the Supreme
Council still ruled the unions. Worst of aU, the combined mem-
bership of the Brotherhoods was less than a hundred thousand
men, one-tenth of the railroad workers.
Debs had no plan to meet this crisis. From 1885 to 1892,be
had been certain the correct policy was to bring craft unions
into a federation, but that theory had been rudely smashed. Now
he was unsure about basic strategy. In his search for a solution,
Debs opened The Magazine to anybody with an idea, and to
several writers who had no ideas at all. Single tax, tariff re-
form, free silver, Utopian socialism, civil service, the national-
ization of railroads-they were all presented and destroyed and
presented again. Words spawned more words. Every reformer
in the country hastily took advantage of an editor searching for
a cause. Joe Buchanan beat the drum for a one-sentence plat-
form to unite all reformers: Government ownership and opera,..
tion of the railroads and telegraph. The silverites said that
Buchanan's platform was perfect, except that free silver should
be added. The single-taxers stubbornly clung to their belief in
the divinity of Henry George. The civil service crowd still
wanted honest government, and they didn't care who owned the
railroads. Sam Gompers and his allies sneered .at the Populists.
And meanwhile, the depression spread over America like a
glacier. Factories closed. Families were evicted from their homes.
Mothers plundered garbage cans in their search for food. Chil-
dren were turned out to forage for themselves. Highways and
city streets were clogged with wandering, homeless, barefoot
men.
Desperate for an answer to this misery, Debs was studying as
never before. He forgot about the plan for a labor newspaper,
let Kate look after the slack affairs of the Debs Publishing
Company, crammed his editorial work on The Magazine into
a few days each month, and worked hi his second-floor library
from dawn until long after midnight. In a few months he or-
ganized into usable form the Countless facts that he had collected
in years of effort. Hundreds of newspaper clippings were kept
in the attic, filed into large scrapbooks. Dozens of notebooks,
filled with notations and incidents from his experience on the
railroads, were now pulled out of their cardboard boxes in the
THE BENDING CROSS
drawers of his roll-top desk. Slowly, from letters. notebooks,
labor and radical journals, government reports, economic text-
books, half-forgotten memories, he pieced together a daring
plan. When Professor John R. Commons of Indiana University
came to Terre Haute in the spring of 1898, the scheme was com-
plete in Debs' mind. In the editor's "home and extensive li-
brary," wrote Commons, "he expounded to me his plan of the
American Railway Union, modeled after the Constitution of
the United States, which should include subordinate organiza-
tions of all railway employees as 'states' in the union."
The plan recognized the distinctive problems and needs of
workers in the various crafts, and united workers of all cra.fts
in matters of common concern. Similar types of organization
were already followed by the brewery workers and the coal
miners. In May, 1898, the metal miners furnished a third ex-
ample. Lockouts, wage cuts, court orders, militia, and bull-
pens had left raw welts on the spirit of the Coeur d'Alene strik-
ers. The strike leaders, while still in jail for contempt of court,
had agreed to combine the unions in the metal mining industry.
As soon as they e r ~ freed, they set up the Western Federation
of Miners with headquarters at Butte, Montana.
Debs' chance to apply his plan came quickly. On June !lO,
1898, fifty disgruntled and alarmed railroaders met in Chicago
to launch a counterattack against the depression. In spite of
the presence of jo b seekers and careerists, the gathering con-
tained the militant leadership of railway labor, with Debs as
the unchallenged spearhead. L. W. Rogers, who had resigned
his job as editor of the Railroad Trainman after the dissolution
of the Supreme Council, came down from Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Sylvester Keliher, secretary-treasurer of the Railway Carmen
and .editor of their magazine, was cheerful but tough-minded;
George Howard supplied eloquence and a flighty temperament.
Through the entire day the men wrangled and quarreled and
compromised, until finally the disagreements were resolved.
That evening Debs announced in a press ~ l e s e the formation
of the American Railway Union. Membership in the new or-
ganization was open to all "white" workers who served a rail-
road in any way, except managerial employees. Even coal
THE AMERICAN RAIL WA Y UNION 98
Winers and longshoremen were eligible if they worked for a
railroad company. Dues were cheap--a dollar initiation fee,
a dollar a year to the national union, local dues to be decided by
each lodge. The purposes of the order were to protect pay scales
and hours of work. to 10 bby for legislation favorable to the work-
ers, to publish a daily newspaper and a monthly magazine, to
provide cheap insurance.
The ban against Negroes, which was the one great error of the
ARU constitution, was never rescinded by anY,railroad union,
although both the Knights of Labor and the AFL had once
sought Negro members. When the Knights organized in 1869,
they agreed that no distinctions would be made on the basis of
color or nationality, and this declaration was rigorously fol-
lowed. Negroes in large numbers were joining the order 'by
1885. Also the AFL had early followed a policy of equality, but
by 1898 its proclamations were being trimmed to suit local
prejudices. It now made little effort to organize Negroes, fre-
quently shunting them into Jim Crow locals. All of the railroad
Brotherhoods denied membership to Negroes and tried con-
stantly to drive them out of the railroad service. Within the
ARU there was strong opposition to the proposed ban, but the
proceedings of the founding convention were never published,
and fifteen months passed before the issue was publicly de-
bated.
[ 9 I
TIlE FOllMATION of the ARU was a sensational development in
the labor world. The new organization boasted about its break
with tradition, and the caliber of its officers lent weight to the
boast. Rogers had been chosen editor, Keliher secretary, Howard
vice-president; and Debs, as president, had a national reputa-
tion. Even Frank Sargent grudgingly admitted later: "Eugene
V. Debs was better known to the rank and file of labor and in all
probability had more friends than any man who ever occupied
a like position." So the ARU expected wide publicity, but the
headlines were usurped by another event.
Six days after the ARU was launched. the surviving Hay-
THE BENDING CROSS
market martyrs were pardoned by John Peter Altgeld, who had
become Democratic governor of Dlinois early in 1893. The news-
paper storm against the pardon of the three men wasbased, not
on the act itself, but on Altgeld's declaration of reasons. If the
governor had predicated his position simply on mercy, it would
have been received with mild applause. His actual course was
far different. Months of study had convinced him that the
original trial had scoffed at justice. His pardon message, by its
biting arraignment of the earlier proceedings, aroused passions.
equal to those of 1886. The public press violently called atten-
tion to Altgeld's foreign birth, his full beard, his humble be-
ginnings. He was denounced . as a socialist, an anarchist, a
criminal. With the Chicago Tribune and Harper' 8 in the lead,
the entire pack of journalistic bloodhounds chased Altgeld
through reams of imagined offenses against law and order.
Similar treatment, as Eugene Debs soon learned, awaited any-
body who dared to support Altgeld's action. Debs' editorship of
T he Magazine had often been criticized within the Brotherhood,
but his praise of the pardon message signaled a more furious
onslaught. Letters linked together the names of Altgeld, Debs,
and Alexander Berkman, an anarchist who had tried to as-
sassinate Henry Frick after the Homestead strike. One elo-
quent writer appealed to Debs not to "extend the hand of
cordiality to those red-fisted monsters of social depravity [the
Haymarket defendants]." But Debs again revealed that stub-
bornness which marked his entire career. The opposition to his
views, far from forcing him to retreat, merely drove him to a
new advance. He had read Altgeld's message, with its careful
review of the evidence, and its logic had underscored his convic-
tion. Confident that he was right, he struck two blows for every
one from the dissenters. As it became apparent that a majority
of organized labor supported Altgeld, the verbal battle in The
Magazine slowly died away.
The Haymarket pardon, although it hindered the task of
publicizing the ARU, failed to divert Debs from that purpose.
He and his fellow officers were aware of the need to win labor
support and clarify their aims before beginning an organizing
drive. Dozens of conferences were held with local unionists,
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION 9S
friendly newspapermen, officials in the Brotherhoods and the
AFL. The details of setting up the outfit were handled carefully
but quickly. Headquarters were established in Chicago. Sta-
tionery was ordered. Credit was established. Every act pointed
to the main goal: to stampede the railroaders into the ARU.
The genius of an organizing drive lies in the creation of great
enthusiasm for the venture and confidence in its leadership.
The prime technique is to inflame a joyous headlong rush into
the organization. The ARU, short of money. short of skilled
leaders, had to compensate for these handicaps by its finesse
and conviction. Debs was confident of success, so confident
that he predicted at least three hundred lodges would be or-
ganized before the first convention in June, 1894. But his view
found little support; the prediction was everywhere greeted by
scornful disbelief.
The craft-union leaders were united in their opposition to the
new movement. Resentment and fright were widespread among
the Brotherhood officials. Their rosters were dropping rapidly,
largely because of the inability of members to pay the high dues.
The depression was cause enough for worry, and industrial
unionism was added reason for alarm. Even Samuel Gompers,
who had felt great respect and friendship for Debs, was openly
hostile to the ARU. In a letter to Gompers, Debs had declared
his attitude: "There is no purpose to antagonize existing or-
ganizations, but it is believed that on account of its [the ARU]
superior advantages it will absorb some of them at least and that
ultimately there will be one organization for railway employes."
This candor failed to change Gompers' mind; the AFL leader
regarded any dual union as treason to the labor movement.
Gompers implied in his autobiography, thirty years later,
that Debs had been lured into the ARU by a desire for fame.
When Gompers was on a trip to the West Coast in 1891, ac-
cording to the autobiography, he was visited in Kansas City
by George Howard. Howard stated that he had worked out a
plan to bring all railroad workers into one organization, and
he"asked Gompers to launch the enterprise and be first president.
Gompers refused because he "felt that it was better to let the
brotherhoods correct their own mistakes rather than to foster a
96
THE BENDING CROSS
dual organization with the hope of bringing the railroad unions
into the Federation." Howard then said that he wonld take the
proposal to Debs. According to Gompers:
I told Howard that if I knew anything about Debs he would
repudiate the offer just as I had, and resent the proposal. . .
So when it was announced that Debs had accepted the position
of leader and become president of the American Railway Union,
I was truly shocked; though I bore Debs no ill will, I never
could quite forgive him for his action and particularly for r ~
taining the position of editor of the official magazine of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen while undertaking to
establish ariv.al organization which aimed for the disintegration
and destruction of the brotherhoods, his own included.
In making such a statement, Gompers apparently was blinded
by the accumulated quarrels of thirty years. Debs had con-
tinued as editor of The Magazine, over his repeated protests, at
the unanimous insistence of the BLF convention. And, although
perhaps George Howard fathered the idea for the ARU,
Debs' philosophy was clearly moving toward industrial union-
ism. Debs joined the ARU in the belief that the Brotherhoods
had failed to protect the interests of the railroad workers. His
evidence for this belief was exaggerated but basically sound:
I was now to organize, with half a dozen others, the American
Railway Union, so :that engine wiper and section man might
come in for their share of consideration as wen as the engineer
and conductor.
This is where I broke' with the railway officials. They were
perfectly willing that we should have a firemen's union, but
they were not willing for us to have a union that would unite
all employees in the service in the equal interest of all.
Although the corporation executives vigorously opposed the
ARU, the organization was not without its partisan supporters.
The news of its formation brought vigorous approval from Dan-
iel DeLeon, leader of the Socialist Labor Party. DeLeon, a bril-
liant scholar who had lectured in international law at Columbia
University from 1888 to 1889, had passed through several
radical movements before joining the small Marxist party. In
1886 he supported the mayoralty campaign of Henry George
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION M
in New York, when George ran a strong second to the Demo-
cratic victor and clearly bested the young Republican nominee,
Theodore Roosevelt. Two years later DeLeon joined the Knights
of Labor, then Edward Bellamy's Nationalist movement, and
in 1890 the Socialist Labor Party. Completely devoted to the
workers' cause, DeLeon was certain that he alone was compe-
tent to lead the workers. His intelligence, loyalty, and ruthless-
ness rapidly thrust him to the top of the SLP-he had become
national lecturer of the organization in 1891 and editor of its
weekly organ, The People, in January, 1892. He now used his
editorship to hail the ARU's "deliberate or instinctive recog-
nition of the identity of the class interests of all railroad em-
ployees." The new union, said DeLeon, was "a step in the direc-
tion of clasping hands with the whole working class in all other
industries," and of posing for the labor movement "the question,
the real question . . . -the abolition of the capitalist system
of production, the establishment of the co-operative common-
wealth."
But far more important than DeLeon's support was the en-
thusiasm of the railroaders after the first AR U lodge was formed
on August 17. It seemed that every underpaid railroader in the
country-and there were nearly a million of them-wanted to
join the order. Debs and his cohorts had carefully plotted for a
stampede, but they were not ready for the breakneck rush that
greeted them. The officers were unable to pass out charters
fast enough to keep pace with the applications. Entire lodges
of the Railway Carmen and the Switchmen transferred to the
ARU. Firemen, conductors, even engineers, joined the industrial
union. But the great majority of recruits came from previously
unorganized men who had been unable to meet the high monthly
dues of the Brotherhoods. The unskilled workers had been un-
protected, underpaid, exploited; now the dikes snapped and a
reservoir of bitterness and hope drove men pell-mell into the
American Railway Union.
Debs, always prodigal of his health, recklessly hurled his
energy into an effort to sustain this gigantic upsurge. He fol-
lowed the iron rails back and forth across the great plains, car-
rying his ideas and faith to the railroaders. Everywhere he spoke
the same words: CYl'ganize; federate. On his lips, Labor Unity
became the war song of the new crusade. It even seemed that
he would be too busy to accept an invitation from Henry
Demarest Lloyd, the chairman of the Labor Auxiliary. to fill a
lecture engagement at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
But on August 30 Debs was in Chicago. calling on the workers
to take the future into their own hands:
The time is fortunately, when we are hearing less of that
old paternal PharLsaism: ''What can we do for labor?" It is the
old, old query repeated all along the centuries, heard wherever
a master wielded a whip ,above the bowed forms of the slaves.
It is the language of the slave catcher. the slave pen, the slave
block and the slave plantation. We hear it yet, occasionally,
along lines of transportation, in mines and shops, but our ears
are regaled by a more manly query. an permeated
with the spirit of liberty and independence, whlch is, "What can
labor do for itself?" The answer is not difficult. Labor can or
ganize, it can unify, it can consolidate its forces. This done. it
can demand and command.
& soon as Debs had finished his speech. he left for another
town to organize another lodge. Week after week. he rushed
from one city to the next, speaking. conferring. sending an 0c-
casional letter or hurried telegram to Kate. It was a gruelling
existence, but he knew that Howard and Keliher were working
just as hard, accomplishing just as much. And they were win
ning. Never in the United States had an organizing drive met
with like success. The officials did not have to coax or persuade;
their main job was to sign cards and issue charters. By Septem-
ber 5, a scant twenty days after the first lodge was founded in
Fort Madison. Iowa. thirty-four AR U locals had been estab.
lished. With no money. with only three organizers in the field,
the ARU was'"signing up two.to four hundred members a day,
day after day. Then Debs headed homeward to rest. lay the
groundwork for a new spurt forward. and do some work on
The Magazine. '
[ 3 ]
THE BUSINESS CRISIS had continued to grow deeper and sharper.
until Bradstreet's estimated that there were three million unem
ployed in the United States. In Chicago, Debs had seen unbe-
lievable poverty. Thousands of transient workers had been en-
ticed there by the Columbian Exposition, only to be stranded
without jobs. Police stations all over the city sheltered from
sixty to a hundred men every night. Sprawling figures slept in
the corridors and on the stairways of the City Hall. Mayor
Carter Harrison stated that Chicago held two hundred thou-
sand unemployed men, and a newspaper there estimated that
saloonkeepers were furnishing free meals for sixty thousand
men a day.
These conditions, paralleled throughout the country, stimu-
lated a new growth of radical ideas in the labor movement. At
the AFL convention of 1890, Sam Gompers had flatly announced
his opposition to socialism and to political action by labor.
"The trade unions pure and simple," Gompers declared, "are
the natural organizations of the wageworkers to secure their
present material and practical improvement and to achieve
their final emancipation." But at the following convention, a
delegate from the machinists' union introduced a platform of
political demands which called for "the collective ownership
by the people of all the means of production and distribution."
This platform missed adoption by a narrow margin, and in a
subsequent referendum it was endorsed by a dozen large unions,
thus encouraging the socialist attack on "pure and simple trade
unions." The simultaneous growth of the People's Party gave
rise to a demand that the Federation discard its traditional non-
partisan policy, and either endorse the Populists 01' launch its
own political movement.
The new socialist agitation found a ready outlet in The M ag-
azine. Debs' office was flooded by articles based on a loose and
confused Marxism. One contributor, in trying to criticize the
single-tax movement, managed to confuse himself, his readers,
and the theory of surplus value. Another article spoke with
respect of Karl Marx but argued that Marx's results could be
attained more simply by other means. Debs, without really at-
tempting to understand these strange doctrines, used them to fill
the pages of The Magazine. He had no interest in theoretical
subtleties; his own energy was consumed in a pragmatic solu-
100
THE BENDING CROSS
tion of daily problems. The idea of a social system other than
capitalism had never seriously entered Debs' mind.
But although Debs still felt friendly toward Frank Sargent
and John Hannahan, the issue of industrial unionism had im-
posed a definite strain upon their relations. The chief victim of
Debs' heresy, however, was his brother Theodore. Since the
ARU was unable to support a cashier and bookkeeper, Theodore
had been forced to keep his old position with the Brotherhood.
He felt more and more like an interloper, until finally he was
able to tolerate it no longer. Early in 1894 he joined Eugene in
the ARU. Never again did the two brothers work for competing
interests.
Late in 1898, during one of Debs' visits in Terre Haute, Jamey
Riley came there to give another lecture. Kate Debs made
elaborate preparations for a family dinner to honor the poet,
who was going to follow his usual custom of staying at her home.
Small watercolor prints, brought all the way from Chicago,
were used as placecards. All of the appointments were in yellow
and white, according to the local society pages, and huge bowls
of chrysanthemums were placed throughout the house. Much
thought was lavished on the occasion, so that everything might
be perfect. The dinner passed in gaiety and compliments. to
Kate Debs' complete gratification. But the actual climax oc-
curred in a press conference after dinner, when Riley proved
that he, too, could meet the demands placed upon him. In his
best stage voice, the poet molded a cornerstone for what came
to be the Debs Legend: "God was feelin' mighty good when he
made Gene Debs, and he didn't have anything else to do all
day."
[ 4 ]
THE MIGHTY BURGE of the American Railway Union continued
unchecked and undiminished. By November 15, charters had
been issued to eighty-seven lodges, enabling the order to keep
four organizers on the pay roll. At the year's end the Union
Pacific, the Santa Fe, the Denver & Rio Grande, the Rio Grande
TlIE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION 101
& Western, and several lesser roads were solidly organiZed.
There were twenty-two ARU locals on the Northern Pacific
and more than forty on the Southern Pacific. Debs was every-
where advising the workers to resist all wage cuts during the
depression, because if wages were once ~ u it would take years
to have them restored; but his advice was not needed. Never had
he seen such a spirit among the railroaders. On one western
railroad the auditing clerks wanted to organize, but the com-
pany stated that every clerk who joined the ARU would be dis-
charged A group of switchmen at once called on the manager
and warned him not to threaten the clerks. During a grave de-
pression, when unemployed men stood on every street corner,
such action seemed suicidal, but the switchmen made it stick,
and for the first time a railroad office was filled with union men.
The first number of the Railway Timcaappeared on January 1,
1894, and Rogers' trenchant arguments further accelerated the
growth of the ARU. The U!lion expanded so violently that it
became chaotic and unwieldy. Thetop officials were experienced
and capable unionists, but there was an alarming dearth of
secondary leadership. Local unions of three to four hundred men
were composed solely of raw recruits. The hat-waving, thigh-
smacking youthfulness that gave the organization its vigor
could also bring it to disaster. Debs knew that novices were
poorly qualified to deal with corporation executives who were
brilliant and adroit, men who held their cards close to their
chests and played them with finesse.
But, by a peculiar twist of bad luck, the first challenge came
from a Federal Judge. Early in l\Iarch, receivers acting for a
Federal District Court declared a wage cut for all workers on
the Union Pacific, and Judge Elmer S. Dundy issued an in-
junction which forbade the workers to strike. This was not the
first use of the injunction in labor disputes. In 1888 labor or-
ganizers in Baltimore and in Kent, Ohio, had been enjoined from
attempts to induce workers under contract to leave their jobs.
During the railroad strike of 1888, many state coUrts had issued
restraining orders. A Federal court in Colorado, as early as
1885, granted an injunction during a labor dispute on a rail-
road which was being operated by the court, and six years later
another District court intervened in a case that did not involve
Federal receivership.
These judicial precedents meant nothing to Debs. Hurrying
to Cheyenne, Wyoming, he condemned the injunction as a
"death-blow to human liberty," since it prohibited any combina-
tion among the men to quit work. He also vigorously attacked
the wage reduction. A few days later the senior judge on
Dundy's court, Henry C. Caldwell, called a conference of the
receivers and the employees for March 15 at Omaha. When this
conference failed to reach agreement, Judges Caldwell, Dundy,
and John A. Riner began hearings on both the wage cut and the
injunction. The hearings completely vindicated the union's posi-
tion. The decision of Caldwell and Riner ordered the former
pay schedules restored. Equally important, it set aside the in-
junction on the grounds that no injunction could be issued re-
quiring specific performance by the employees, and that work-
ers have an indisputable right to combine in order to raise
wages.
The ease with which the ARU won its Drst victory made its
members cocky and also heightened the resistance of the rail-
roads. When a dispute developed two weeks later on James J.
Hill's Great Northern. neither the workers nor the company
showed a willingness to compromise. Hill had often shown his
unscrupulousness and financial shrewdness during his rise from
Canadian obscurity to membership in the highest circles of
railroad management. & clerk for a packetboat company at
St. Paul and then as claim agent for the St. Paul & Pacific
Railroad, he had acquired expert knowledge of transportation
and storage. Realizing that coal would inevitably replace wood
as train fuel, Hill began to buy coal lands; the wisdom of his
prediction established him as an independent power in Min-
nesota finance. In 1878 he and three other men purchased the
bankrupt St. Paul & Pacific, and for twelve years they carefully
expanded their railroad holdings. The Great Northern, which
was formed by combining the various roads in 1890, reached
Puget Sound in 1898-the northernmost transcontinental line.
Hill, with a rm control over the entire system, did not pro-
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION lOS
pose to loosen his grasp. He was determined that he would re-
tain the Great Northern, a,nd that the Great Northern would
retain its profitable status. Wages on his line were slashed in
August, 1898, and again in January and March, 1894. After the
third cut, engineers and freight conductors were drawing eighty
dollars a month; truckmen, roundhouse workers, and section
hands a dollar per day; the average was less than forty dollars a
month. In April, the employees. voted to strike unless Hill met
their representatives to set up a new pay scale. Hill refused to
answer an ARU letter informing him of his employees' decision.
His managers issued appeals to the workers to stay at their
jobs, promising promotions to those who were loyal to the com-
pany. But the men did not trust Hill, and the strike was called
at noon on April 18.
As the strike spread across the Northwest, James J. Hill in-
structed his superintendents to fire anybody known to be sym-
pathetic to the union. In a further attempt to intimidate the
workers, huge cardboard signs were posted the entire length
of the Great Northern, carrying a declaration by the Assistant
Attorney-General that any interference with the Federal mails
could be punished by a ten-thousand-dollar fine and two years
in prison. But the trains were not halted by violence-they were
halted because nobody would work. On April 21 the mayor of
St. Cloud, Minnesota, wired to Hill: "Send no scabs here. Will
only tend to create a disturbance. R.R. property protected and
men orderly." That same day, as Debs' train rolled into St.
Paul, a stranger approached him with a request to attend a con-
ference at Hill's home. Fearing a trap, Debs refused the invita-
tion. He continued to S1. Paul. where he, his brother Theodore.
and George Howard set up strike headquarters in the Sherman
House. The men who hurried into the hotel suite were all given.
simple instructions: Nobody works. Nobody stops any trains. !
When the chiefs of all the Brotherhoods either came out
against the strike or swore strict neutrality, L. W. Rogers opened
up with his heaviest sarcasm in the Railway Timea. Frank
Sargent had told Hill: "If the firemen in your employ, who are
members of the brotherhood. have quit work in the present
strike, they have violated the rules of the organization and will
1040
THE BENDING CROSS
be expelled!" Rogers answered for Hill: "Thanks awfully." The
Grand Chief Conductor announced: "Our members' duty is to
comply strictly with our laws, to perform their regular and
proper duties. If any participate in a strike they must abide
the consequences, which are well known to all." And the Time8
replied: ''Return and be forgiven. God bless you, my children;
chip in the dues:'
After his railroad had been closed down tight for more than
a week, Hill summoned the ARU officials to a meeting, where he
announced that he would arbitrate if the Brotherhoods were
represented on the panel. Debs flatly refused on the grounds
that the Brotherhoods were not a party to the dispute. If the
Brotherhoods control your workers, why, asked Debs, can't
they move your trains? He added that the strike would be set-
tled on the union's terms, which had already been presented to
the company. Debs knew that he was in a strong position. The
nine thousand employees of the Great Northern were united in
support of their strike. Every train was stQPped except mail
trains, which were moving on Debs' explicit orders. Instead of
weakening the union, t ~ strike was strengthening it. At one
large meeting of railroaders in St. Paul, where Debs and Howard
spoke, two hundred twenty-five men joined the ARU.
But James J. Hill was slippery. One day Debs was startled to
find himself summoned to the office of Governor Knute Nelson.
He was more startled when he arrived there. The governor, after
studiously ignoring his caller for several minutes, began furiously
to attack Debs as an "agitator," an "anarchist," a "foreigner,"
who was "stirring up strife among peaceful and contented work-
ingmen." AB Nelson talked his voice rose, his face became livid
abOve his gray chin whiskers; his short body bounced around
the room. But the strike leader quietly heard him out. Then
Debs curtly told the governor about the conditions which had
caused the walkout and ended by taking the offensive: "You
can't bluff me. I can see clear through you and your game. You
wear Jim Hill's collar. I don't. You are acting under his orders.
I am here to fight him. I absolutely refuse to order the strikers
back to work. . . Moreover, I propose to place you and your
attitude squarely before the. workingmen of Minnesota and
THE AMERICAN RAIL WAY UNION 106
when you are next a candidate they will put you where you
properly belong." By the end of the conference Nelson was beg-
ging Debs not to misunderstand him. The strike leader angrily
replied: "No, governor, that is not the trouble; the trouble is
that I do understand you."
Jim Hill now played his trump card. He arranged an invita-
tion for Debs to address the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce,
believing that contact with the strike leader would unite the
business community in opposition to the ARU. Debs thought
it would be fun to bait the bear in his own den, so he accepted.
And this was truly the bear. As Debs entered the meeting, his
audience was cold, hostile, rigid. These men had dealt in brains
and ruthlessness to make fortunes on the frontier. Their dep-
redations found virtue in a rigid philosophy: The earth belongs
to the strong. A folk saying about them was more accusing:
"They stole into the Territory. They stole the Territory. They
stole out of the Territory." Trade unionism would find little
support in this room. The air hung motionless and forbidding,
much as it had when Debs and Susan B. Anthony walked
through the streets of Terre Haute in 1879.
Debs began his talk calmly, taking his listeners along the rail-
roads. telling them what it meant to be a section hand or a
brakeman. His hands drew pictures of the small frame shacks
behind the roundhouses and the freightyards. He explained the
anguish and worry of rearing a family on a dollar a day. His
lean body strode back and forward across the platform, the
bald head bobbing like a Halloween apple. Most audiences in
1894 expected a speaker to funlish long words, Biblical construc-
tions, wild bursts of oratory, and Debs had spent two decades
copying this mode. But his ideas had begun to control his rhet-
oric; his speech was becoming more his own. He used fewer
pointless images, fewer lush sentences. Now, as he stuck to liv-
ing realities, minds began to move in rhythm with his high and
melodious voice. The hostility in his audience collapsed, like a
silent outpouring of swallowed breath. Man after man lost his
animosity and began to feel friendly toward this hulking in-
vader who talked so fervidly about his own people. When Debs
had finished, the Chamber of Commerce demanded that the
dispute be submitted to arbitration. Debs accepted. Hill was
beaten.
Eighteen days after the strike began, the ARU leaders met
the company in the anteroom of Hill's office to hear the decision
of the arbitration board. As Charles Pillsbury, a flour milling
magnate and chairman of the board, droned out the award, the
jubilant unionists slapped their thighs and shook hands with
each other. The strikers had won 97)1 per cent of their demands.
an aggregate wage increase of $146,000 a month. Debs and Hill
arose in turn to announce that they were empowered to say
that the award was satisfactory. Pillsbury proposed a lavish
banquet to celebrate the settlement, but Debs made a counter-
proposal: Spend your ten thousand dollars to buy calico for the
wives of the section men. Jim Hill congratulated the strike
leaders on their shrewd management of the walkout. Then the
unionists hurried from the room to send wires to every point on
the Great Northern, ordering the men back to work. Howard
and Rogers left to travel over the system and make certain the
wires were obeyed. In a brief press conference, Debs told of his
joy and relief: "The one grand achievement of this strike is to
prove to organized labor that there is nothing in violence. I do
not think there will be any more big strikes for a long time. I
hope not. . I feel as though a great load were taken off my
shoulders. The strain was terrible, because there were so many
interests to be considered. I want to go home for a while."
The train carrying Debs to Terre Haute moved slowly out of
the yards in St. Paul Both sides of the track were lined with
railroaders, standing bareheaded to thank the man who had led
them to victory. Debs never forgot a detail of the inciden t:
The greatest tribute that was ever paid to me was that of the
section men after the Great Northern strike. As my train pulled
out of St. Paul. those men with shovels in hand and happiness
fairly radiating from their faces, yet with tears in their eyes-
those section men stood at attention. That tribute was more pre-
cious to me than all of the banquets in the world.
The wonderful unity of the strikers had earned their triumph.
Hill had not been able to set one Brotherhood against another,
as the railroads had customarily done. From one end of the
Great Northern to the other, the men had peacefully left their
jobs. Not a drop of blood had been shed, but not a wheel had
turned, except those on mail trains. Peaceful and united action
had proved the key to success. Debs afterwards wrote that the
Great Northern strike was the only clear-cut victory of any
consequence ever won by a railroad union in America.
This strike merely stiffened opposition to the ARU among the
craft unionists. In his autobiography, Samuel Gompers wrote:
The A.R.U. made some progress during its first year. On the
Great Northern there was a strike and for a moment circum-
stances were to their favor and they won an agreement. It was
not due to the A.R.U. that they won; it was due to influences
brought to bear other than the organization. .
Unfortunately, Gompers did not name these "other influences,"
nor did he explain why they benefited theAR U but bypassed the
other unions. During 1894 nearly seven hundred :fifty thousand
men took part in strikes, but the only important gains were won
by theARU. In one year Debs' union signed up a hundred fifty
thousand railroaders, while the combined Brotherhoods could
list only ninety thousand names and the AFL was hard driven
to maintain its hundred seventy-five thousand members.
When Debs returned to Terre Haute, more than four thou-
sand persons gathered to hear his account of the strike. Disdain-
ing to attack Hill, Debs merely stated that "the reduction was
without cause" and then stressed the heroism of the workers,
the peacefulness of their conduct, and the mutual congratula-
tions with which the strike had closed. The reaction of the Rev.
Holmes Park of the First Baptist Church was true of many
others: "I went to hear him that night with great prejudice. I
remember that there was not an innuendo or a single fling at the
men who had been his enemies. I said that he was a born leader,
and I have never taken it back."
CHAPTER 6
[ 1 ]
TI
fierce, hard-fought Pullman boycott of 1894, named
The Debs Rebellion by the commercial newspapers,
began as a local dispute in the small Chicago suburb
of Pullman, Illinois. During the previous year, more than sixteen
thousand business firms had gone bankrupt, including fifty
companies with a capital of more than a half million dollars
each. Thousands of other firms were threatened with failure.
The cont.inued drop of wholesale prices made it increasingly
difficult to produce goods at a profit. Companies, in a frantic
attempt to cut their production costs and salvage their invest-
ments, repeatedly slashed the pay of their workers. These wage
cuts and layoffs burst with a peculiar fury upon the residents
of Pullman, where the Pullman Palace Car Company was the
only employer and the only landlord. Since there was no com-
peting demand for labor,' and since most of the Pullman workers
lacked the money to migrate elsewhere in search of better jobs,
they were forced to submit or starve.
Even in prosperous years, wages itt Pullman were below the
union scale for similar work in Chicago, and this difference was
accentuated during the depression. A Federal commission later
estimated that Pullman slashed wage rates ~ per cent between
1898 and May, 1894. The Rev. William IJ.. Carwardine, a min-
ister in Pullman who later wrote a book about the labor dispute
there, believed that the reductions were even greater: "The
average cut in wages was 8873 per cent; in some cases it was as
much as 40 per cent, and in many was fifty per cent," Iron ma-
chinists in the streetcar department at Pullman charged that
their wages were reduced 70 to 85 per cent. Vice-President T. H.
Wickes of the Company, contradicting these claims, said that
the average daily rate of earnings had declined only 19 per cent,
but he failed to point out that few men worked eVery day. The
108
size of the pay roll had declined drastically. In July, 1893, there
were fifty-five hundred employees at Pullman, but the following
May the total working force was only thirty-three hundred.
Just as wages were lower in Pullman, so rents were higher
there. Jane Addams of Hull House, who investigated the tOWIl
for the Civic Federation of Chicago, said that an eighteen-dollar-
per-month cottage in Pullman could be rented for fifteen dollars
in Chicago. In the words of the Federal commission: "If we ex-
clude the aesthetic and sanitary features at Pullman, the rents
there are from 20 to 25 per cent higher than rents in Chicago
or surrounding towns for similar accommodations. The aesthetic
features are admired by visitors, but v ~ little money value to
employees, especially when they lack bread." But the company
refused to cut rents when it reduced wages, claiming that its
rental of houses was a separate business from its manufacture
of sleeping cars, and that there was no connection between the
two enterprises.
Every foot of ground, every house, every church in the town
was owned by the company, and they were run on a purely
commercial basis. Even the sewage from the workers' homes
was pumped to George M. Pullman's truck farm as fertilizer.
Adults paid three dollars and children one dollar per year for
the use of the town library, but the company said this charge
was levied "not for profit, but to give the subscribers a sense of
ownership."
The town was similar in many ways to a feudal manor, with
George Pullman as absolute monarch. Since he believed that
saloons and trade unions tended to inflame the workers, both
were banned from the community., The eight-hour day was also
banned, because Pullman thought that idleness would promote
mischief. Professor Richard T. Ely and a Chicago judge both
charged that the company hired spies to inform against the
workers, and Mr. Carwardine wrote: "I am in a position to
know that information of everything going on in the town of
Pullman .. is conveyed by letter every week to headquarters
from the town proper." In order to maintain this absolute dom-
ination, the company freely interfered in local elections. In-
timidation at the polls was common. The residents were advised
how to vote, and the advice aIso held a poorly concealed threat.
On one occasion a foreman was ordered to withdraw his name
as a candidate for public office; when he refused he was fired.
Although most employees continued to live in Pullman be-
cause residents there were the last to be laid off and the first to
be rehired, they deeply resented the destruction of their dig-
nity. With grim humor one man declared: "We are born in a
Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shop, taught in the Pull-
man school, catechized in the Pullman church, and when we die
we shall be buried in the Pullman cemetery and go to the Pull-
man hell." Mr. Carwardine added that an awareness of George
M:. Pullman, not an awareness of God, ruled the community:
"An unpleasant feature of the town is that you are made to feel
at every turn the presence of the corporation .... This is a
corporation-made and a corporation-governed town, and is
utterly un-American in its tendencies." Four years later, the
Supreme Court of Dlinois agreed. Ordering the Palace Car Com-
pany to sell all property in the town of Pullman not needed for
its manufacturing business, the Court declared that company
towns were "opposed to good public policy and incompatible
with the theory and spirit of our institutions."
'Pie Pullman Company also exploited its monopoly position
by charging exorbitant prices for its services, according to
contemporary claims. Senator John Sherman, Republican of
Ohio, who introduced a bill to bring the Pullman Company
within the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, said to the Washing-
ton correspondent of the Chicago Inter-Ocean: "J regard the
Pullman Company and the sugar trust as the most outrageous
monopolies ot the day. They make enormous profits, and give
their patrons little or nothing in return." This attack aroused
much comment, because George Pullman was a major source of
campaign funds for Sherman's own party. Sherman exaggerated
when he said that Pullman gave its customers ''little or nothing
in return." but he minimized when he said that it had made
"enormous profits." Since its formation in 1867, the company
had paid an annual dividend of 8 per cent, and during the de-
pression dividends were increased while wages were being cut
25 per cent. For the year ending July 81,1894, the corporation
had an nndivided surplus of $!l,8!lO,OOO, exceeding its total wage
outlay for six months. Losses on the contracts received in 1894
were borne equally by the workers and the company, but, in
the opinion of the Federal commission, "three-quarters of the
loss for the compa.ny and the balance for labor would have more
fairly equalized the division of loss on these contracts." Brush-
ing aside the corporation's plea that, in addition to other losses.
it had received no interest on its investment, the commission
emphasized that much greater losses would have followed a
complete shutdown.
As early as December, 1898, the Pullman Company was forced
to issue a public statement denying the existence of extreme
distress among its workers. The denial was easy to read, and
easy to believe for men who had their own distress. Nobody
cared much about poverty in Pullman except the residents of
Pullman. During the harsh TIlinois winter, want and suffering
there became unbearable. Children lacked the money to buy
school books, but that didn't matter-they also lacked the
shoes and coats needed to go to school In some homes they were
kept in bed all day because there was no cool in the house; in
others they were sent to bed early because there was no food for
dinner. All joy passed from life. Sullen, tight-lipped women
walked lead-footed through their worries. Men stood day after
day by their windows and looked at the dirty black snow in the
street-no work, no money, little hope. They erupted into vio-
lent rage, kicking the dog, swearing at the children, berating
the wife for unmentionable evils. Nothing to do but stand at
a window all day ,looking at the dirty black snow and hearing a
baby's whine from the next room.
Spring brought back hope, not much but a little. Men began
to talk about striking one good blow against Pullman. During
March and April, a majority of the employees joined the Ameri-
can Railway were eligible because the company
operated a few miles of track near the factory. Finally on May 7.
1894, a committee of forty employees visited vice-president
Wickes to present their complaints about wages and working
conditions. Wickes told the committee to return two days later
with their grievances down in writing; but on May 9 Wickes
THE BENDING CROSS
again delayed, promising to personally investigate the shop
abuses. The men were not satisfied. Words were cheap, they
thought; you couldn't trust Wickes. The next night the griev-
ance committee held an all-night session at the Turner Hall in
Kensington, an adjoining town, to discuss the adVisability of a
strike. George Howard and Sylvester Keliher were both at the
meeting to urge delay until Wickes had completed his investiga-
tion. Howard had previously wired to Debs, who was in Terre
Haute, that a walkout might occur. Debs, knowing nothing of
conditions in Pullman, had advised caution until the union
could learn the facts. But Howard's oratory, Keliher's ebullient
charm, and Debs' influence all went for nothing. The workers
were mad. God Himself could not have stopped them. On the
third ballot they voted unanimously to strike.
At noon on May 11, three thousand workers left their jobs in
the Pullman shops, and the remaining three hundred men were
quickly laid of! by the company. The walkout was calm, with
no hint of violence. The strikers posted guards around the plant
to make certain that vandals would have no chance to damage
corporation property. Driven to the end of the tether, these men
had snapped the chains and struck, but they struck without
much hope. Resigned desperation was the major key in a May 18
statement by Thomas Heathcote, the strike committee's chair-
man: "We do not expect the company to concede our demands.
We do not know what the outcome will be, and in fact we do
not care much. We do know that we are working for less wages
than will maintain ourselves and families in the necessaries of
life, and on that proposition we absolutely refuse to work any
longer."
Notified that the strike had begun, Debs at once hurried to
Pullman to investigate its causes. The ARU had neither called
nor authorized the walkout, but these men were membefs of the
union and Debs' clear responsibility was to. ascertain the justice
of their action. Seven years earlier 'he had protested against
George Pullman's labor policies, but he was iII prepared for
what he found in 1894. The Pullman employees told incredible
but truthful stories of hardship. One skilled mechanic worked
ten hours a day for twelve days, and then received a pay check
for seven cents; his wages had been $9.07, but nine dollars rent
for his company-owned house had been deducted in advance. A
fireman worked "428 hours per month or about sixteen hours
per day, and receives therefrom $40.00 per month pay," ac-
cording to Mr. Carwardine. A blacksmith, paid forty-five cents
for working six hours, declared that he was not willing to starve
and wear Ollt his clothes on Pullman's anvil at the same time.
"I have a wife and four children," another employee said, "and
it was for them that 1 struck, as 1 think that when a man is
sober and steady, and has a saving wife, one who is willing to
help along, and after working two and a half years for a company
he finds himself in debt for a common living, something must
be wrong."
Working conditions, almost as much as wages, had stimulated
the revolt. There was a rigid hierarchy in the shops, no official
da.ring to contradict his superiors. Foremen were free to curse
and abuse their men, confident their authority would be always
upheld. One worker explained how the company systematically
used the speed-up system: "cabinet-makers were rated at
seventeen to nineteen cents [per hour}, and prices for piece work
were supposed to be made to enable men to make that rate;
wherever a man made over one or two cents per hour above day
rate, that particular job was again pruned in price." There was
no recognition of merit in the company's policies, and thirty
years of loyal service were no guarantee against discharge with-
out cause. One man was blacklisted for a trivial offense; forty
employees were blacklisted in another case. There was no pen-
sion for laid-off or retired workers, many of them spending their
last days in a poorhouse. Mr. Carwardine charged that the com-
pany did not pay disability damages "unless absolutely com-
pelled to, to those who are injured or die in its service." All
inventions by employees were simply appropriated by the cor-
poration, the inventor receiving neither payment nor recogni-
tion.
On May 14, Eugene Debs spent the entire day wandering
through the town of Pullman, inspecting the houses, talking
with the women and children, noticing the size of pay checks,
hearing complaints by the score, by the hund:red. That night
Debs left for St. Paul, but four days later he was back in Pull-
man and spent most of the day and evening there. As one link
clutched the next to form an ugly chain of greed and injustice,
his hesitation disappeared. Finally he told a meeting of Pullman
employees:
H it is a fact that after working for George M. Pullman for
years you appear two w:eeks after your w?rk stops, and
hungry, it only emphastzes the charge I made before thIS com-
munity, and Pullman stands befo!e you a self-confessed. robber
. The paternalism of Pullman 18 the same as the
of a slave-holder in his human chattels. You are striking to
avert slavery and degradation.
[ f!
WHEN the first national convention of the American Railway
Union met in Chicago on June 12, 1894, the entire labor move-
ment was in a critical siruation. Layoffs and wage cuts had
aroused fierce resistance, but strike after strike had been beaten
down. The formula perfected at Homestead, Coeur d'Alene,
and Buffalo, was even now being used against a hundred fifty
thousand coal miners: strikebreakers, injunctions, Federal and
state troops, starvation. The glorious promise of the unemployed
march on Washington had ended a ludicrous shambles, with
General Jacob S. Coxey arrested for walking on the Capito)
lawn. Only the American Railway Union had managed to beat
its way forward. Debs had been ridiculed ten months earlier
when he predicted three hundred lodges within a year, but his
estimate had been exceeded; the convention held more than four
hundred delegates from four hundred sixty-five local unions.
Debs, in his opening speech, pointed a course that seemed wen
tailored to the organization's needs and strength. Recalling the
aid received from coal miners and other railroad workers during
the Great Northern strike, he applauded the growing unity of
labor. 'The ARU did not wish to antagonize the Brotherhoods,
but was trying to unite all railroaders, including those who had
been ''left out in the cold to endure the pitiless storms of cor-
porate power." Just six weeks earlier in The Magazine, Debs had
attacked government ownership of the railroads as a step that
would increase "absolutism in government enterprises" and
that would leave the employees defenseless, since the govern-
ment would never tolerate strikes or boycotts against itself.
Now he sharply reversed himself, urging government purchase
in order to eliminate profits and thus insure lower rates to the
public and higher wages tq labor. Without recommending any
specific action in regard to 'the strike at Pullman. he emphati-
cally stated his opinion of the reasons for the walkout there: "It
was work and poverty in Pullmantown, or Pullemdown, until,
patience ceasing to be a virtue, and further forbearance becom-
ing treason to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the em-
ployees determined to strike to better their conditions ....
John, R. Commons, listening to Debs, "was thrilled by his
eloquence and his sympathy for the fa.ctory employees." The
delegates were overwhelmed. One passage in the address brought
them to their feet screaming, whistling, cheering, throwing their
hats and fans high into the air:
The forces of labor must unite. The dividing lines must grow
dimmer day by day until they become imperceptible, and then
labor's hosts, marshalled under one conquering banner, shall
march together, vote together and fight together, until working
men shall receive and enjoy all the fruits of their toil . . . Such
an army would be impregnable. No corporation would assail it.
The reign of justice would be inaugurated. The strike would be
remanded to the relic chamber of the past. An era of good will
and peace would dawn.
Debs' militancy and fervor set the tone for the entire con-
vention., Point by point, the young and enthusiastic delegates
hammered out a program far in advance of the Brotherhoods.
After an address by J. R. Sovereign, who had replaced Powderly
as head of the K of L, the convention. resolved to "tender to the
Knights of Labor its hearty alliance in all movements brought
about for the elevation and benefit of the laborer." Military in-
tervention in strikes was condemned by a provision that no
ARU member should join any state militia "until such time as
they are used for a more righteous cause than at present." The
People's Party was indirectly endorsed in vigorous language;
WHEREAS, I t has been the common practice to ask candidates
for public office, their endorsement for the principles set forth
in the platform of labor organizations; and
WHEREAS. When office has been secured, the pledges have
been frequently broken and wholly ignored; therefore be it
RESOLVED, That it is the sense of this convention that to
secure perfect emancipation from the wrongs and inequalities
inflicted by our social system, that the laboring men must act
on independent political lines, and support men whom they
know to be in accord with their principles.
The delegates later approved a free-silver plank, one of the main
demands in the Populist platform.
Motion after motion was passed in this wave of solidarity.
Not even the boiling weather could ruffle tempers among the
delegates. Men from the great plains complained about Chicago
water---there was no alkali in it-but a soft-drink stand was set
up in the vestibule of Uhlich's Hall, and saloons rubbed elbows
for blocks along North Clark Street near. the hall. The first
measure to arouse tension, as wen as oratory, was an attempt to
wipe out racial discrimination in the order. Although the dele-
gates had demanded an immediate ban on immigration of
"Chinese and similar classes," an amendment was offered to
strike out the words "born of white parents" from the member-
ship requirements. Debate lasted a full day before the amend-
ment was rejected by a vote of 112 to 100, and the delegates
offered their "synipathy and support" to any effort to organize
the Negro railroaders into a separate organization. "Sympathy
and support" has slight practical value, but even this evasive-
ness was an advance from the frankness with which the Brother-
hoods demanded that all Negroes be barred from jobs on the
railroads.
On June 15 the convention began its consideration of the
Pullman dispute. Many of the delegates had already made in-
spection trips to the suburb and talked to the workers there.
They had returned to Chicago angry, resentful. Now a com-
mittee from the strikers presented a lengthy statement to prove
the greed and despotism of George M. Pullman. The statement
concluded with a passionate appeal for support from the con-
vention:
We struck because we were without hope. We joined the Ameri-
can Railway Union because it gave us a glimmer of hope. ...
We will make you proud of us, brothers, if you will give us the
hand we need. Help us make our country better and more whole-
some. . . . Teach arrogant grinders of the faces of the poor
that there is still a God of Israel, and if need be a Jehovah-a
God of battles. . .
Thus was the stage set for a moving statement by Jennie Curtis,
a seamstress at Pullman, who lifted to reckless heights the grow-
ing excitement among the delegates. Miss Curtis, thin and tired,
said that after her father died she had been forced to repay th e
sixty dollars back rent that he owed the company, even though
her father had been a Pullman employee for thirteen years.
The Rev. William Carwardine testified that the residents of
Pullman were on the brink of starvation, but his plea was not
needed. The story of Jennie Curtis was irresistible to the sen-
timental railroaders.
Debs now used every rein of control in the ha.nds of a chair-
man. His shrewdness, his eloquence, his influence, were all
thrown into battle against headstrong action, and, in the end,
they all went for nothing. The entire hall was filled with mufBed,
bitter comments: George Pullman had gone too far. It was time
to show the bloodsucker. The ARU should boycott all Pullman
cars, not move a single sleeper until Pullman settled with his
workers. By God, it wasn't right to rob a girl. No, by God. Fin-
ally one man spake for dozens of men: A boycott against Pull-
man cars should be declared immediately. Debs, in his calmest
voice, refused to entertain the motion. He suggested that a
committee be appointed to confer with the Pullma.n. Company.
Committees from the convention had previously investigated
charges of unfair labor practices against a certain corporation,
of spying by an ARU member, of strikebreaking by a loco-
motive engineer--the delegates remembered that investigation
had in some cases proved the charge untrue. So twelve men were
chosen, including six strikers, to call on the company and pro-
pose arbitration.
Determined to settle the dispute peaceful1y, Debs fervently
hoped that the company would agree to the proposal. Above
118
THE BENDING CROSS
everything else, he wanted to avoid a boycott on Pullman cars.
Unemployed railroaders stood on every corner, just waiting
for vacancies. The Brotherhoods were so unfriendly that they
probably would not co-opera te; some of them might even furnish
strikebreakers. The General Managers Association, which
united all railroads passing through Chicago, had efficiently
a threatened strike by switchmen there in 1893, and
it might interfere in a dispute between the ARU and Pullman.
Injunctions, state militia, Federal troops might be used again
as at Homestead and Coeur d'Alene. Most important of all, the
ARU was not ready to tackle Pullman. The organization was
big and growing rapidly, but it was inexperienced. The members
were raw recruits to unionism, and most local union leaders
were hayseeds in the labor movement. A conilict with Pullman
might settle doWn into a long struggle, and the ARU had no
strike funds a t all. It was best to wail The ARU had been lucky
against the Great Northern; it might not be so lucky again.
But the Pullman Company refused to yield an inch. The com-
pany claimed that wages and working conditions should be de-
cided by the management, with no interference by labor. George
Pullman was in business for profit, and the decreased sale of his
product made it necessary to cut wages. That was his position.
And, from the company's viewpoint, it was undeniably true.
On June 16, the mediation committee from the re-
ported that the company refused to confer with any members
of the American Railway Union. This news fairly exploded in
Uhlich's Hall. Pullman's intransigeance infuriated the dele-
gates, who were now ready for any action. Again a boycott was
proposed, with overwhelming support. Again Debs blocked the
move. At his suggestion a second committee, composed en-
tirely of Pullman employees, was sent with a request for ar-
bitration. Within a few hours the committee returned; vice-
president Wickes had said there was "nothing to arbitrate."
The committee had then asked whether the company would
consider restoring wages to the May, 1898, scale. The vice-
president's answer wiped out all hope for a peaceful settlement:
"Mr. Wickes replied that we had no right to ask him that ques-
tion, as he thought we stood in the same position as the man on
the sidewalk."
Realizing that the dispute could not be settled promptly, the
convention tried to alleviate the suffering at Pullman. Mayor
JohnP. Hopkins of Chicago was thanked for his fifteen-hundred-
dollar donation to the' relief fund. The delegates also voted a
two-thousand-dollar contribution to the strikers, and a weekly
assessment of ten cents on every member at the discretion of
the executive board. Then attention returned to the strategy
to be used against the Pullman Company. The delegates wired
to their local unions for instructions and the replies gave them
blanket authority to use their own judgment. Finally a special
committee was chosen to recommend a plan of action.
On June 22, this committee made its report: Unless the Pull-
man Company agreed to begin negotiatiQIlS within four days,
the Pullman shops at Ludlow, Kentucky, and at St. o u ~
would be struck, and the ARU would refuse to handle Pullman
cars. George Howard opposed this plan by arguing that mere
cessation of work at Ludlow and St. Louis would force the com-
pany to yield. The delegates brushed aside this proposal. They
knew that a major part of the company's revenue came from
rental of its Palace Cars; it would surrender only if its income
were completely cut off. Debs announced his readineSs to accept
the convention's verdict, but he again emphasized the need for
caution. In no mood for caution, the delegates accepted the com-
mittee's report. The committee was then sent for a final con",
ference with Mr. Wickes, who still refused to settle the dispute
by peaceful means, so the convention unanimously voted the
boycott, to begin at noon on June 26 unless the corporation
changed its mind.
De bs' hesitation was now irrelevant. Every union leader must
answer three questions when a strike is proposed: Do the work-
ers have just and serious grievances? Have all peaceful avenues
for settlement been exhausted? Can the workers win the strike?
Debs could give affirmative answers to the first two questions.
He was dubious about the chances for victory, but that decision
had been taken out of his hands. He was the servant of the rank
120
THE BENDING CROSS
and file; it was now his job to move heaven and earth for vic-
tory. So he carefully outlined to the convention a plan for the
boycott which would not, in his opinion, violate the Interstate
Commerce Act. He was particularly anxioUs to avoid injunc-
tions. Under his plan, the switchmen would refuse to switch
sleeping cars. If they were discharged, every other ARU mem-
ber on that railroad would quit work" immediately. Then they
could pray that nothing would go wrong.
Only one item now remained on the convention's agenda-the
election of the nine-man executive board of the union. When
Debs was nominated, he tried to decline for two reasons: "First,
that he shared the belief of some that it would be to the best
interests of labor if some of its leader!> would step aside, and he
desired to set the example, and he believed that he could be of
more service, perhaps, to the laboring classes on the outside,
than by remaining in active service with the American Railway
Union"; and second, that his health would not allow him to con-
tinue the strenuous activities of an organizer. But the delegates
quickly resolved that "the railroad men of the country could
not afford to lose their honored Jeader, and his resignation should
not be considered." The resolution was accepted without a dis-
senting vote. A motion was next made to raise the president's
salary to four thousand dollars. Competitive bidding began;
the stipend was jumped to five thousand, then to six thousand.
But Debs refused to accept more than three thousand, so his
salary was set at that figure. Then the delegates adjourned, re-
alizing but imperfectly the battle that faced them.
CHAPTER 7
[ 1 ]
TI
PULLMAN COMPANY did not retreat, nor did
the workers. At noon on June 26, the deadline set by
the convention, Debs ordered all sleeping cars cut from
the trains and sidetracked. The railroads at once took an active
rOle in the conflict; they refused to move any trains without
Palace Cars on the grounds that their contracts with Pullman
were inviolable. The General Managers Association,* which
was the employers' general staff throughout the boycott, wel-
comed a showdown fight with the ARU. The railroads had con-
sistently discriminated against ARU members. and they had
refused to giv:e Debs and his colleagues the free passes which
they handed out to officials in the Brotherhoods. Thus the ARU
came into immediate conflict with one of the strongest groupS
of employers in America; The Managers represented the twenty-
four railroads terminating or centering in Chicago, which had 8.
combined capital of eight hundred and eighteen million dol-
lars, operated forty-one thousand miles of track, and had two
hundred twenty-one thousand employees.
Foreseeing opposition from the railroads, Debs had already
asked for assistance from the AFL and the Brotherhoods. A re-
turn wire from Samuel Gompers showed the reluctance in that
sector: "Just received telegram signed your name. Verify same
by letter giving full particulars'" Only president John McBride
of the Mine Workers promised full co-operation; the others re-
plied evasively or negatively, and most of the Brotherhoods
worked against the boycott. When four hundred engineers
struck on the Wabash, P. M. Arthur denounced the act as a
violation of the Engineers' rules. Under the circumstances, he
said, unemployed engineers would be permitted to fill the va-
cancies left by the strikers. The chief of the Conductors took
,. Hereafter called The Managers.
121
THE BENDING CROSS
the same stand, replying that he had "neither authority nor
inclination" to help theARU. He later said. that the craft juris-
diction of his organization made it hostile to the industrial
union led by Debs, and that the boycott was wrong, "no mat-
ter what the conditions at Pullman were." The Brotherhood of
Trainmen instructed its members to "perform their regular
duties and no others, that is to say, they were not expected to
leave their trains as conductors or brakemen and go into the
yard where the switchmen had struck out of sympathy or other-
wise." Since the Trainmen had itself organiZed switchmen, this
provision had little practical meaning. The BLF was more
cautious in its hostility; Frank Sargent later said:
The B. of L.F. could not take part in the strike because our
Constitution prohibits it. The B. of LF. must observe their
agreements. B. of LF. committees should immed'mtely call
upon railway officials and make arrangements so that they
would not be called upon to fire engines vacated by strikers.
But Debs had no time to send Gompers "full particulars" or
to negotiate with the Brotherhood leaders. The nerve center of
the boycott was set up in Uhlich's Hall; the ARU offices, at 421
Ashland Block, being much too small. Co-ordination of five
hundred local unions and thousands of men rested in the hands
of Debs, Howard, Keliher, Rogers, a few organizers, and Theo-
dore Debs, who was again working side by side with his brother.
The boycott began slowly. In spite of the convention orders,
each ARU lodge was constitutionally forced to hold its own
vote to determine whether it would support the boycott. Every
lodge voted to enforce the convention's decision. The boycott
was not called solely from sympathy with the Pullman workers;
the railroad employees were also suffering from blacklists, short
hours, wage cuts, discrimination. Also the feeling was w i ~
spread that, if the corporations succeeded in conquering the
unorganized workers, they would next move against the or.-
ganized men. Even among skilled workers. there was agreement
with Debs' statement: "Every concession the railway companies
have ever made, has been wrung from them by the power of
organized effort." As lodge after. lodge voted to quit work,
THE A MERICAN RAIL WA Y UNION 123
Debs sent them all the same instructions: Use no violence.
Stop no trains. Elect a strike committee and send me the name
of the chairman. In this way he hoped to keep control over the
entire boycott.
By June 27 only five thousand men had left their jobs, but
fifteen railroads were tied up. The Managers opened offices in
Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Philadelphia, N ew York, and Buffalo,
to recruit strikebreakers; they also opened a central publicity
office in Chicago to furnish information to the newspapers. Soon
the commercial press raised the cry of "Anarchy"; this charge
was doubly effective because President Sadi Carnot of France
had been assassinated by an anarchist just two days before the
boycott began. The third day, more than forty thousand men
had quit work. Traffic was stopped dead on all lines west of
Chicago. In spite of Debs' orders to move mail trains, the Postal
authorities reported that mails were obstructed at Chicago,
St. Paul, and on the Southern Pacific in the Far West. United
States Attorneys were instructed by the Justice Department
to ask for warrants against all offenders.
One day later, nearly a hundred twenty-five thousand men
had joined the boycott. Twenty roads were tied up. A crowd of a
thousand strikers and sympathizers stopped a train on the
Chicago & Erie at Hammond, Indiana, and forced the crew to
detach two Pullmans. The head of the Switchmen wa.rned that
any member of his union supporting the strike would be sub-
ject to expulsion, and the. Conductor's chief attacked the boy-
cott in the public press.
But several unions rallied to the AR U. J. R. Sovereign pledged
aid from the Knights of Labor. The Chicago Federation of
Labor, with one hundred fifty thousand members, offered to call
a city-wide general strike to enforce the boycott. In view of the
probable effects on public opinion, Debs refused to sanction such
an extreme measure at that stage. During the entire boycott he
divided his attention between the need to maintain the strikers'
morale and the equal need to win support among other trade
unions and the general community. On one occasion he even
relaxed the boycott in order to implement its ultimate chances.
The Illinois Federation of Labor had called a conference to meet
124
THE BENDING CROSS
in Springfield on July 1, to consider the political program of the
AFL and to organize "independent political action" by the
labor movement. In order to reach Springfield, the Chicago dele-
gates would be forced to travel over a struck railroad. Finding
himself "at sea," president W. H. Madden of the state feder-
ation went to see Debs. The strike leader quickly grasped the
publicity value of the conference, which planned to use July
Fourth to "dedicate anew the common people to the principles
of the Declaration of Independence." So he willingly gave the
delegates permission to employ any service available to' reach
Springfield.
Throughout the East, The Managers continued to hire strike-
breakers, and the depression provided hordes of recruits. Inti-
mate grudges also motivated many railroaders to become scabs.
One group in New York City told a reporter: "Weare going to
settle an old account. We were strikers on the Gould roads
under Martin Irons [1886], and we haven't handled a switch
since then. The men who are striking now are the men who
helped to fill our places then. Now we are going west to take
their jobs." The Managers easily hired from one hundred to two
hundred fifty men daily; by the strike's end nearly twenty-five
hundred strikebreakers had been sent to Chicago.
On June 30, in spite of Debs' orders to the contrary. minor
violence again occurred Crowds in Chicago temporarily halted
two express trains on the Illinois Central and Panhandle lines.
Union leaders were arrested in Indiana and Missouri. The first
demand for militia in lllinois came from the Illinois Central,
which claimed that its property in Cairo was endangered. Under
the laws of Illinois, the governor could call out state troops when
the legislature was not in session, but only at the request of the
mayor or sheriff. As soon as he had secured permission from
these local authorities, Governor Altgeld sent three companies
of militia to Cairo. Thomas Milchrist, the Federal district at-
torney in Chicago, telegraphed to Washington that strikers had
stopped mail trains in the suburbs the previous night. He also
reported that conditions in Chicago were so bad that special
deputies were needed, and recommended that the United States
marshal in Chicago be empowered to hire such deputies. This
wire by Milchrist exaggerated the actual situation. Five days
after he sent the telegram, total strike damages were still less
than six thousand dollars. There had been no major riots. The
trains halted on the Chicago & Erie, lllinois Central, and Pan-
handle had soon been allowed to proceed The telegram from
Milchrist was contradicted by a simultaneous telegram from the
Superintendent of Railway Mail Service in Chicago, telling the
Postmaster General that no mail had accumulated in the city.
Most important of all, the local authorities were confident of
their ability to handle the situation. Mayor Hopkins had not
even applied to the governor for help, although Altgeld had
shown both his willingness and efficiency in controlling labor
violence. As recently as June 16, striking coal miners at Mount
Olive, Illinois, had interfered with the movement of trains to
prevent the shipment of nonunion coal. Mail trains were among
those detained. The Federal court had issued an injunction
against the rioters; and the United States marshal, believing
that his forces were inadequate, had applied to the Attorney-
General for advice. Attorney-General Richard Olney had im-
mediately wired an answer:
Washington, June 16, 1894.
Allen, U.S. Judge, Springfield, lll.:
St;ate of Illinois is willing to protect property
VIOlence with military force if necessary. Please
to take proper steps to procure protection by
CivIl authorItIes of the State. If such protection proves inade-
quate, the governor should be applied to for military assistance.
Olney, Attorney General
Within one day after application was made to Altgeld, the state
militia had arrived in Mount Olive and succeeded in moving all
trains. Thus Richard Olney had established a procedure for such
situations in which deputy marshals were not required; but
Milchrist now asked for Federal marshals without first going to
the Federal courts, the local authorities, or the governor of il-
linois.
The newspaper campaign against the boycott was in full
swing, with the Chicago Tribune leading the onslaught. On June
lU
THE BENDING CROSS
80 the Tribune let fly with both barrels. One headline read.
"Mob Is In Control"; another charged, "Law Is Trampled On";
a third story began: "Through the lawless acts of Dictator Debs'
strikers the Ii ves of thousands of Chicago citizens were en-
dangered yesterday." The Chicago H e1'ald editorialized: "The
necessity is on the railroads to defeat the strike. If they yield
one point it will show fatal weakness. If the strike should be
successful the owners of the railroad property . . . would.have
to surrender its future control to the class of labor agitators and
strike conspirators who have formed the Debs Railway Union."
There were recurrent charges in the press that Debs was a
dictator, that he was personally profiting from the strike, that he
had called the strike without consulting the union membership.
It was widely, and falsely, reported that Debs had ridden in a
PulJman car from Chicago to Terre Haute during the boycott.
Immediately after Milchrist sent his telegram to Washing-
ton, the General Managers Association met in closed session at
the Rookery Building in Chicago. All newspaper reporters were
excluded. At this meeting the railroads agreed that they would
not rehire any of the strikers. They also sent a wire to Richard
Olney, suggesting that he appoint Edwin Walker as special
Federal attorney to handle the strike situation. Walker was, at
that tIme, attorney in Illinois for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St.
Paul Railroad, a job he had held since 1870. This railroad was
involved in the strike, and was a member of the Managers
Association. A few days earlier, Walker had been asked to
handle all strike cases for the railroads. But within two hours,
without even pausing to consult Milchrist, Olney had appointed
Walker to represent the Federal government.
Eugene Debs, who had just tried to resign his job because of
ill health, was being subjected to tremendous strain. He was
working at top speed clear around the clock. Detailed instruc-
tions had to be sent to hundreds of railroad towns in order to
bolster the weak spots. Constant warnings against v ~ o l e n e and
the obstruction of mail trains were necessary. Howard, Keliher,
Rogers-they were burning up their lives with harried but
jubilant abandon. Uhlich's Hall had become a delivery room for
I
chaos. The executive board was in practically uninterrupted
session, discussing this development, considering that possi-
bility. The large hall was packed with excited men, screaming,
yelling, shouting questions, singing. Exhausted men staggered
out of executive board meetings in the small room, spoke briefly
to the excited throng in the hall, went back to the board room.
They hammered out press releases, sent appeals for help to labor
unions from New York to San Diego. Couriers were constantly
running back and forth to the Western Union-in three weeks
the executive board sent more than nine thousand telegrams.
And Debs moved from one room to another, talking, making
decisions, always smiling, seeming strangely misplaced in an
immaculate tweed suit and hard white collar. Even the reporters
noticed that the calm assurance and control of the strike leader
seemed indestructible. They always looked to him, watched him,
wrote reams of copy about him, little realizing the expert or-
ganization that was working with him. Theodore was always
at hand, the other ARU officers were indispensable.
Opposition to the boycott was gathering intensity. The rail-
roads began deliberately to disrupt their schedules, hoping that
the resultant inconvenience to the public would force govern-
ment intervention. Pullmans were attached to trains that did
not customarily carry them-freights, suburbans, and, most im-
portant of all, mail trains, trying to force the strikers to halt the
mails. The Brotherhoods accelerated their campaign against
the ARU. Conductors in Fort Wayne, Indiana, denounced the
strike, declaring that they would not aid in any way. P. M.
Arthur announced that he did not care whether the railroads
employed uillon or nonunion engineers and firemen; any en-
gineers who refused to work with strikebreakers could be fired
without protest from the Brotherhood. Frank Sargent declared
that any fireman who joined the strike would have to look to the
ARU for help-he would get none from the BLF.
Never before had there been such a strike in the United
States. More than a hundred thousand men had voluntarily quit
work. Between Chicago and the Golden Gate, only the Great
Northern was maintaining a sembrance of its regular schedule.
THE BENDING CROSS
Everybody in the country had taken sides in the dispute. Debs
clearly stated the situation in a speech to the railroaders:
The struggle with the Pullman Company has developed into a
contest between the producing classes and the money power of
the country .... The fight was between the American
way Union and the Pullman Company .... Then the rail4
way corporations, the General Managers' Association,
came to the rescue, and In a series of whereases declared to the
world that they would go into partnership with Pullman, so to
speak, and stand by him in his devilish work of starving his
employees to death.
On July 1, the union was firm at every point, and there waS "no
sign of violence or disorder," as Debs said. He later claimed that
the railroads were losing a fortune daily: "Their immediate re
4
sources were exhausted, their properties were paralyzed, and
they were unable to operate their trains." Although the ARU
had few members in the East and South, it seemed that the
boycott might spread to northern New York and perhaps to
Pennsylvania. The Central Labor Union of New York Cityen-
dorsed the boycott, and urged people not to ride in Pullmans
until the company accepted arbitration. The Central Labor
Union of Chicago took similar action. In spite of the massed
billions of Pullman and the railroads, in spite of the newspaper
barrage, in spite of strikebreaking by the Brotherhoods and
inaction by the AFL, Eugene Debs saw the road to victory
stretching bright and certain into the future.
[ !J ]
DEBS' confidence reckoned without one possibility-Federal
intervention. Throughout the critical period of the boycott,
President Cleveland was occupied in a bitter fight with Congress
over the Wilson Tariff Bill, and his only information about the
strike came from Attorney-General Olney.
Richard Olney, from 1859 until his elevation to the cabinet
in 1898, had been a corporation lawyer in Boston, representing
mainly railroad interests and trust estates. He had also been a
director of several railroads: the Eastex:n, the Boston & Maine,
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION 1!9
lesser New England lines, the Kansas City & Fort Scott, the
Atchison. Since 1889 he had served on the board of the Burling
ton, which was involved in the Pullman dispute. His very ap
pearance indicated his dominant characteristics-a narrow
honesty, truculence, and stubbornness. He was tall, with open
and quivering nostrils, a drooping mustache, dark brown hair
just turning gray. His body tilted aggressively forward, he
stalked swiftly in pursuit of Duty. Olney's violent and Un
predictable temper had been illustrated by an incident several
years earlier, when he forbade his daughter to enter his house
following her marriage, even though he himself had approved
the daughter's choice. The edict was still in effect.
Olney proposed to deal with the strikers much as he had dealt
with his daughter. As soon as the Debs Rebellion started, the
Attorney-General launched a series of maneuvers to defeat it.
He thought that a nation-wide boycott was so essentially violent
that Debs' order for peaceful conduct was a mere sham. In a
memorandum about the Pullman affair, Olney later wrote: "The
President might have used the United States Army to prevent
interference with the mails and with interstate commerce on his
own initiative-without waiting for action by the courts ..
But .. it is doubtful .. whether the President could be
induced to move except in support of the judicial tribunals." So
the Attorney-General decided to prod Cleveland by securing an
injunction against the strike, and then nse the Army to enforce
the court order. This plan, as well as Olney's intention of smash-
ing the boycott, was revealed in his telegram to Edwin Walker
on June 30: "It has seemed to me that if the rights of the United
States were vigorously asserted in Chicago, the origin and
centre of the demonstration, the result would be to make it a
failure everywhere else and to prevent its spread over the entire
country .... I feel that the true way of dealing with the mat
ter is by a force which is overwhelming and prevents any at-
tempt at resistance."
Olney's attitude rested on three premises: (1) Any national
railroad strike is automatically illegal; (2) The causes of the
strike in Pullman were not relevant to the legality of the boy-
cott; (3) The state and local officials could not be trusted to
ISO THE BENDING CROSS
enforce the law. Altgeld. after all. had pardoned the Haymarket
survivors, and Mayor Hopkins of Chicago had openly contrib:-
uted to the relief fund at Pullman. Olney later claimed that Hop-
kins "even went so far as to openly wear the distinctive badge
of the rioters"-a white ribbon was the emblem of the strikers,
and Olney thought all strikers were "rioters" in this instance.
In accord with this interpretation, the Attorney-General was
trying to persuade the President that the Army should,be used
at Chicago, and the troops at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, were
ordered to hold themselves in readiness. Meanwhile a constant
demand for the maintenance of law and order was emanating
from the pulpits and the commercial newspapers. On July 2 a
headline on the Chicago Tribune screeched:
STRIKE IS NOW WAR
And the lead editorial had a shrewd caption:
Six Days Shalt Thou Labor-BIBLE
Not Unless I Say So -DEBS
In New York the Reverend Robert S. MacArthur said that
there were "more. Anarchists today in Chicago than in St.
Petersburg . . . Anarchists should be excluded from the United
States." He added that all boycotts were "unmanly and un-
American." The Reverend A. C. Dixon of Brooklyn also con-
tributed to calm consideration of the matter: "the Anarchist is
a savage in a civilized country who is trying to turn civilization
intobarbarism."
That same day, in a crushing blow, Judges Peter Grosscup
and William A. Woods of the Federal Court in Chicago issued
an omnibus injunction against the ARU leaders. The previous
Decoration Day, Judge Grosscup had said in a speech: ''The
growth of labor orgaillzations must be checked by law." It was
later shown that Judge Woods had accepted such important
favors from the railroads that his impartiality was doubtfuL
Their irregular procedure in this case is therefore not surprising:
Milchrist and Walker had prepared the application for the
injunction, and the two judges had helped them to revise it
before court opened. The breadth of their order was astonishing.
Using the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 as authority, the in-
junction prohibited the strike leaders from any action to aid the
boycott. They were forbidden to answer questions, to send
telegrams. They were denied the right to urge men, by word of
mouth, to join the boycott. Their constitutional rights to speak,
write, and assemble freely, were ignored. They were, in short,
completely shackled. Even Grover Cleveland was forced to ad-
mit that "a sweeping injunction had been granted against
Eugene V. Debs."
Richard' Olney, in a letter to Edwin Walker, September 24,
1894, justified the injunction under both the Sherman Antitrust
Law and the powers of a court of equity "to enjoin a public
nuisance when it threatens a public injury." Under his second
thesis Olney made six points: (1) the obstruction of a public
highway is a public nuisance; (2) railroads are public highways;
(8) interstate railroads are Federal highways; (4) any obstruc-
tion of a Federal highway is enjoinable; (5) "the concerted,
sudden, and simultaneous withdrawal from service of the trained
corps of expert employees necessary to the operation" of rail-
roads is an obstruction; (6) any act to promote a railroad strike
can be enjoined. Olney's basic argument was used by scores of
professors who defended the writ in law journals. Congressmen,
without understanding the doctrine, spoke for days in its de-
fense. Ministers solemnly identified the injunction with the
voice of God.
The attack on the injunction was equally savage. The New
y ork T i ~ while opposing the strikers, referred to the court
order as "one of those peculiar instruments that punishes an
individual for doing' a certain thing, and is equally merciless if
he does not do it, so it is difficult to understand how the strikers
can maintain their present policy and at the same time evade
its operation or escape its influence." The trade unions claimed
that this injunction had taken from the railroaders the only
weapon with which they could fight against corporate injustice,
and that it gave the railroads unqualified power over all em-
ployees. Railroad workers still had the right to quit work indi-
vidually, but where could they find other jobs during a depres-
sion? The unions objected to the absolute power of Judges
THE BENDING CROSS
Grosscup and Woods to punish violations of an order they them-
selves issued. They protested against issuance of the injunction
without giving the ARU a chance to present its objections. They
vehemently exclaimed that the government had shown scant
knowledge and no respect for the rights and problems of the
. workingmen.
As soon as the injunction was served. Debs caned the ARU
executive board into session to decide their response. Violation
of the writ might result in jail sentences for the union officials,
and also have the effect of placing all strikers outside the law,
in active opposition to the Federal government. On the other
hand, obedience to the order would crush the strike, and would
end all hope of forcing compromise by the Pullman company.
Obedience would destroy the ARU and cause thousands of men
to lose their jobs, since the railroads had pledged themselves not
to rehire any striker. The job, already begun at Homestead,
Buffalo, and Coeur d'Alene, of crushing the morale of labor
would be completed; moreover, it would be a signal for the em-
ployers to move immediately against every trade union in
America. The executive board came to a decision-they would
ignore the injunction. Eugene Debs bitterly declared: "the crime
of the American Railway Union was the practical exhibition of
sympathy for the Pullman employees."
The ARU officials realized that they would surely be caJled
into court to answer for this decision. Legal advice had been
supplied, up to this point in the boycott, by the regular ARU
attorneys and by William Irwin, a well-known Miimeapolis
lawyer; but Debs now resolved to hire an expert in equity and
constitutional law. His choice seemed rather strange on the
surface-he went to Clarence Darrow, attorney for the Chicago
& Northwestern Railroad, which was involved in the dispute.
Darrow had come to Chicago in 1887 from Ashtabula, Ohio, a
young, poorly trained, country lawyer. Having few clients,
Darrow was able to take an active part in Grover Cleveland's
campaign in 1888. He gave several speeches without attracting
any notice, but then he was invited to speak with Henry George
at a Free Trade Conference in the Central Music Hall. His ad-
dress that everrlng was splashed all over the front pages; he
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION ISS
became a celebrity. In the audience had been De Witt C.
Cregier, who was elected Democratic mayor of Chicago a few
weeks later. Judge John Peter Altgeld urged Cregier to give his
friend Darrow a job. Cregier agreed. Darrow was named special
assessment attorney of Chicago. Three months later a political
shift forced the resignation of the Assistant Corporation Coun-
sel, and Darrow was promoted. Soon after that, ill health caused
the retirement of the Corporation Counsel, and Darrow, a resi-
dent of Chicago less than two years, became head of the city's
legal department. In 1892 he left public office to become general
attorney of the Chicago & Northwestern. The Northwestern
Railroad thought that their new employee was rather eccentric
-he sympathized with labor, was always speaking at meetings
of radicals and free-thinkers, played a leadhig r6le in the am-
nesty campaign for the Haymarket survivors-but they knew
that he was a brilliant lawyer. Debs' choice was not So strange
after all.
This request by the ARU put Darrow in a ticklish position.
He had previously been named by the Chicago & Northwestern
as their representative on the committee that was conducting
the strike for the railroads, and had refused the appointment on
the grounds that his sympathies were with the union. But he
was now being asked, in effect, to resign completely his job in
order to take a series of cases that would involve little pay and
gruelling work. The courts' preference for property rights over
civil liberties would make it almost impossible to successfully
defend his clients. Ii was a hard choice to make. Darrow's con-
viction, Debs' persuasiveness, and the arguments of several
mutual friends, finally turned the trick. Darrow became special
counsel for the AR U.
The situation was indeed becoming desperate. An increasing
number of strikebreakers were being brought into Chicago. The
ARU charged that the railroads were even trying to inflame
religious divisions among the strikers. The governor of Michigan
ordered out the militia, although the United Press stated from
Battle Creek: ''The company has no men here that it can use to
pull the trains if there were 1,000,000 soldiers here, and it is
esteemed unwarranted. Then again the men have done nothing
134
THE BENDING CROSS
to prevent the company from'moving its trains. The strikers say
they will furnish all the men wanted for mail trains."
Throughout the country the injunction was being used against
the strikers. As sweeping as the court order had been, the in-
terpretations of it were even more sweeping. George Howard
later to the Federal investigating commission:
Men have been alTested in Chicago because they refused to
turn switches when told to; they were aITested when they re-
fused to get on an engine and fire an engine; . . . in Albu-
querque, New Mexico, they arrested a man and he was sen-
tenced to fifteen days in jail because he refused to get on an
engine and fire it when told; the fact that he did not get on the
engine was considered contempt of court.
And then,. on July 4, Grover Cleveland played the leading
role in the last great act of the drama. The issuaJlce of the in-
junction had severely increased the problems and anxieties of the
strike leaders. Debs had slept only a few hours a night since the
beginning of the boycott; with this added strain it was long
after midnight when he and Theodore arrived at their room in
the Leland HoteHor some brief and troubled rest. Early on the
morning of IndePendence Day, they were awakened by the
sound of bugles and voices right under their window. Thinking
that it might be a parade, Debs sleepily walked to the window
and gazed down at Jackson Street and Lake Michigan. The sigh t
he saw caused instant Hundreds of Federal sol:"
diers were encamped along the lake front.
, Richard Olney, who furnished the guiding hand for
land's act, could cite precedent for the use of the Army in such
cases. During the railroad strikes of 1877, United States troops
had been sent into Maryland, TIlinois, Pennsylvania, and West
Virginia, at the request of the governors. Moreover, and this was
of critical significance to Olney's plan, on that occasion the
Army was used in Indiana and Missouri on application of
Federal marshals, not of any state officials. Already during the
Pulhnan boycott, the Army had been sent to Los Angeles, to
New Mexico, and to Trinidad, Colorado. Although
Violence had in these places, Governor Davis Waite of
Colorado had violently objected to the Administration's action
THE AMERICAN RAIL WA Y UNION ISS
on the ground that the militia was competent to handle the
small disturbance in his state.
When Olney first proposed sending troops to Chicago, Secre-
tary of War Daniel S. Lamont and General Nelson A. Miles had
both opposed the suggestion. But on July 3, Olney received from
Judge Grosscup, Marshal J. W. Arnold, Walker, and Milchrist,
a telegram that was misleading in five respects. This telegram
stated that violence had occurred in Chicago, when it actually
occurred in a suburb. The telegram failed to mention that the
violence, which :flared up brie.f1y on July 2, had subsided by
July 8. The wire also alleged, without proof, that no authority
less than the Army could protect the mails, that the workers of
Chicago would join a general strike "today, and in my opinion
will be joining the mob tonight, and especially tomorrow . . .".
Secretary Lamont and General Miles now approved Olney's
plan.
President Cleveland promptly ordered the entire command at
Fort Sheridan to Chicago for the following purposes:
1. To protect Federal property.
2. To prevent obstruction of the U.S. :mails.
8. To prevent interference with interstate commerce.
4. To enforce the decrees of the Federal courts.
The facts were that no Federal property had been destroyed in
Chicago, and there seemed to be no imminent danger. The
Superintendent of Railway Mail Service had stated that no mail
had accumulated there. Mail trains were still moving. Trains,
including mail trains, had been detained in the suburbs, but this
had not happened since July 2. The chief obstruction to inter-
state commerce lay in the workers' refusal to haul Pullman cars.
H the ARU was right in its contention that the injunction was
illegal, there was no court decree to be enforced.
Cleveland's action involved him in a heated dispute with Gov-
ernor Altgeld. The President had relied for authority on two
Civil War statutes, which had never been used in time of peace.
The President has power, according to the United States Con-
stitution, to send the Army into a state "on Application of the
Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be
IS6 THE BENDING CROSS
convened)" in order to protect the state "against domestic
Violence." In a lengthy telegram to Cleveland, Altgeld pro-
tested that neither he nor the Legislature had applied for assist-
ance. There were three regiments of militiamen in Chicago that
could have been mustered into service, but "nobody in Cook
county, whether official or private citizen," had asked for their
help. It was true that violence had occurred, but it was easily
handled by the local and state authorities. "At present some of
our railroads are paralyzed," wrote Altgeld, "not by reason of
obstruction, but because they cannot get men to operate their
trains. For some reason they are anxious to keep this fact from
the public, and for this purpose they are making an outcry about
the obstructions in order to divert public attention. . The
newspaper accounts have in many cases been pure fabrications,
and in others wild exaggerations.". The Governor protested,
lastly, "that local self-government is a fundamental principle of
our Constitution. Each community shall govern itself so long as
it can and is ready and able to enforce the law . "
President Cleveland briefly replied that the postal authorities
had asked for the removal of obstructions to the mails, that
Judge Grosscup had asked for help in enforcing the injunction,
and that there was "competent proof that conspiracies existed
against commerce between the states." On any of these grounds,
wrote Cleveland, Jle could have ordered Federal troops into
lllinois.
Altgeld, however, was not to be put off so easily. In a second
long telegram he protested that Cleveland's action violated
state's rights, established militarY rule. in Illinois, and indicated
a swollen and unconstitutional judgment of the powers of the
President. The conclusion of Altgeld's wire was plain enough:
" .. believing that the ordering out of the Federal troops was
unwarranted, I again ask their withdrawal." But Cleveland was
even more brusque: "While I am still persuaded that I have
neither transcended my authority nor duty in the emergency
that confronts us, it seems to me that in this hour of danger and
public distress, discussion may well give way to active efforts on
the part of all in authority to restore obedience to law and to
protect life and property."
Altgeld was forced to yield to the power of the Army, but
similar protests were made by the governors of Kansas, Colo-
rado, Texas, and Oregon. Neither Cleveland nor Olney had any
doubts about the correctness of their action. When reporters
called at Olney's office on July ~ they found him sending a wire
to Milchrist instructing the immediate indictment of the strike
leaders. He seemed pleased with developments, and told the re-
porters: "We have been brought to the ragged edge of anarchy,
and it is time to see whether the law is sufficiently strong to
prevent this condition of affairs. If not, the sooner we know it
the better, that it may be changed." Cleveland had succinctly
expressed his views to a friend: "If it takes every dollar in the
Treasury and every soldier in the United States Atmy to deliver
a postal card in Chicago. that postal card shall be delivered." A
political colleague later said the President thought his action in
the Pullman boycott was one of the best moves he made in
either of his administrations.
Debs. like Altgeld, was unable to find any justification for the
use of the Army. The militia were under arms in twenty states.
In a few western states, the railroads were so unpopular that the
state troops had refused to act against the strikers, but this was
not true in Illinois. It seemed to the ARU officials that Cleve-
land and Olney had joined the railroads in a campaign to destroy
their union, and this belief was heightened when The Managers
announced that they would not confer with the municipal au-
thorities or any other party to arbitrate or compromise the
dispute. The Administration had exerted tremendous pressure
on the strikers, but it had not said a single harsh word about
George M. Pullman or the railroads; Debs had not objected to
the use of state troops and local police, but he deeply resented
the implication that the strikers were in rebellion against their
government, and that the United States Army was needed to
quell the riots. His protest to the President, made jointly with
J. R. Sovereign, warned Grover Cleveland that his course would
lead to rebellion. The two unionists contended that "a deep-
seated conviction is fast becoming prevalent that this Govern-
ment is soon to be declared a military despotism." The railroads
themselves, who were accused of refusal to carry mail on trains
138
THE BENDING. CROSS
to which Pullmans were not attached, were charged with full
responsibility for the interruption of the United States mails.
Debs feared that the presence of Federal troops in Chicag()
would serve, not to keep the peace, but to inflame the populace,
and he heatedly told a. United Press reporter:
Thefirst shots fired by the regular soldiers at the mobs here
will be the signal for a civil war. I believe this as firmly as I
lieve in the ultimate success of our course. Bloodshed will
low, and ninety per Cent of the people of the United States will
be arrayed against the other' ten per cent. And I would not care
to be arrayed against the laboring people in the ,contest, or find
myself out of the ranks of labor when the struggle ended.
This prediction proved all too true. Although there had been
brief but serious outbreaks in the suburbs on June 30 and July 2,
no violence had occurred in Chicago before July 5. On that day
railroad tracks were blocked, a freight train was stalled, a signal
house was burned. The regular soldiers made a bayonet charge
against a crowd, and people were injured. Strike damage
in the city still totaled less than six thousand dollars, but Mayor
Hopkins was sufficiently alarmed to issue a proclamation which
forbade riotous assemblies.
A t the suggestion of Governor Altgeld, Hopkins formally re-
quested state troops on July 6. Railroad property valued at
three hundred forty thousand dollars was destroyed in Chicago
on that day alone, although on no other day did damage exceed
four thousand dollars. The presence of the Army had indeed
proved to be a "signal for civil war," as Debs said; but the
hundreds of special Federal deputy marshals had an even worse
effect. Since men with regular employment were unwilling to
accept these temporary jobs, Marshal Arnold had deputized
labor spies, professional strikebreakers, racketeers, petty
sters, the flotsam and jetsam of the city. Several public officials
fiercely attacked these special deputies. Governor Waite of
Colorado called them "desperadoes" who had been hired "with-
out any regard for their qualifications but simply for military
purposes." On July 6 near Pullman, where a mob of hoodlums
was overturning freight cars, one of these deputies deliberately
killed an innocent spectator; Accidentally shot while standing
nearly a hundred yards from the scene of the riot, the victim
tried to rise, but the deputy advanced upon him and shot him
. again. The killer was never arrested, although his identity was
well known. Police Chief John Brennan of Chicago later testified
that, on one occasion, these deputies fired into a group of people
when there was no disturbance and no reason for firing. "Inno-
cent men and women were killed by these shots," he added.
"Several of these officials were arrested during the strike for
stealing property from railroad cars. In one instance, two of
them were found under suspicious circumstances near a freight
car which had just been set on :fire. They were dangerous to the
lives of the citizens on account of their careless use of pistols."
The union also claimed that the railroads had burned their
own cars in order to discredit the strike and collect damages and
insurance on obsolete equipment. According to Debs, the assist-
ant fire chief of Chicago once caught several deputy marshals
cutting fire hoses when some cars were burning. Some news-
papers supported the union's claim. ~ T h e railroads had every-
thing to gain by a little well advertised rioting which could be
attributed to the strikers," said the New Y ork Morning Journal.
"The strikers had everything to lose by violence and they knew
it." Although the maximum pay of Federal deputies was $2.50
per day plus $1.50 expense money, the government paid out
three hundred seventy-five thousand dollars to deputies during
the boycott. In Chicago alone, the cost to the Treasury was a
hundred twenty-five thousand dollars, and many deputies were
paid their salaries by the railroads.
It was charged that soldiers also deliberately tried to provoke
violence. Brand Whitlock, Governor Altgeld's secretary, told
. about one colonel, drunk in a Chicago club, who wished that he
might have an entire regiment to shoot the strikers, "each man
to take aim at a dirty white ribbon." But several Army officers
in Chicago, according to Mayor Hazen S. Pingree of Detroit,
soon realized that the newspaper stories about the strike were
biased. These officers, at a small meeting in a hotel, decided that
the strikers had a just cause and that the Army had been called
out solely to break the strike. Resolving to publicize their views,
they scheduled a second meeting to draft a statement. Before
this second meeting could be held, news of the first gathering
leaked out. All of the participating officers were held for courts-
martiaL This action was squelched by direct order of the Presi-
dent, said Pingree, '1Jut the colonel was retired from active
service and the other officers cowed by pressure from Washing-
ton authorities." Pingree was convinced that the troops had
been used, "not so much to quell a riot as to crushlaborunions!'
Debs, continuing his efforts to stop the violence, repeated his
instructions to the strikers:
I appeal to you to be men, orderly and law-abiding. Our cause
is just, the great public is with us, and we have nothing to fear.
Let it be borne in mind that if the railroad companies can
secure men to handle their trains, they have that right. Our men
have the right to quit, but their right ends there. Other men
have the right to take their places, whatever the opinion of the
propriety of so doing may be
. Keep away from railroad yards. or right of way, or other
places where large crowds congregate. A safe plan is to remain
away entirely from places where there is any likelihood of an
outbreak.
The railroad managers have sought to make it appear that
their trains do not move because of the interference of the strik-
ers. The statement is an unqualified falsehood, and no one knows
this better than the managers themselves. They make this false-
hood serve their purpose of calling out the troops.
Respect the law, conduct yourselves as becomes men and our
cause shall be crowned with success.
The riots, the arson, the bloodshed, the deliberate provocations
to violence by soldiers and special deputies. had created new
worries for Debs. He was nearly always at ARU headquarters,
where the men had daily grown more serious. more intense.
wondering how the mad holocaust would end, whether it would
ever end. Only two days had passed since the Army. entered
but those forty-eight hours had bred a lifetime of
torture and anxiety. The .(\RU leaders were still united in their
determination to see the boycott through to the end. The future
of the entire labor movement rested with them; if they failed,
the workers would suffer for years to come. Clinging to this con-
viction. Debs sent a wire to all ARU lodges urging them to
stand fast:
Every true man must quit now and remain out until the fight is
won. There can be no half way ground. Men must be for us or
against us. Our cause is gaining ground daily and our success is
only a question of a few days. Do not falter in this hour. Stand
erect. Proclaim your manhood. Labor must win now or never.
Our victory will be positive and complete. Whatever happens,
do not give credence to rumors or newspaper reports.
The opposition was equally confident. Edwin Walker wired to
Olney that he had gathered sufficient evidence of an ARU con;.
spiracy to warrant presenting it to the grand jury, which was
scheduled to meet July 10. This wire was a strange statement
from a neutral official. Before anybody had been indicted,
Walker wrote about the probable results of their trial: "I firmly
believe that the result of these trials and the punishment of the
leaders will he so serious that a general strike upon any railroad
will not again occur for a series of years." The same day, the
chief of the Brotherhood of Trainmen defended the actions of
The Managers on the grounds that they had merely fulfilled
their contraets with Pullman, w bile P. M. Arthur said of the
boycott: "Inevitably it must fail. It is a question of but a short
time. . . . The Engineers Brotherhood cannot take part in such
an unwise movement. It Wormed Mr. Debs at the outset that
we could give him no assistance. Engineers are employed to
draw trains, not to build cars." In return, The Managers made
it clear that they bore' no ill feeling against the Brotherhoods,
and Attorney-General Olney later intervened in behalf of the
Trainmen in a legal case.
By July 7, the events in Chicago had captured the headlines
of every metropolitan newspaper from coast to coast. Some of
the headlines were truly terrifying. Destruction of railroad
property had been widespread the previous day, with damages
amounting to three hundred forty thousand dollars, but the
press made it seem that the entire city had been despoiled. A
headline in the Washington Post told its readers:
Fired By the Mob
Chicago at the Mercy of the Incendiary's Torch
and the New York Sun was on the same general track:
THE BENDING CROSS
Wild Riot in Chicago
Hundreds of Freight Cars Burned by Strikers
The most extreme headlines came from the center of the dispute
-Chicago-where the Inter-Ocean might have been describing
the razing of Carthage:
Flames Make Havoc-Unparalleled Scenes of Riot,
Terror and Pillage
Anarchy is Rampant-Mobs at Pullman and Burnside
Apply the Torch
Two Chicago newspapers-the Daily News and the Rec01'd-re-
mained neutral during the boycott, while the Dispatch, the Mail,
and the Times defended the strikers. Also individual writers on
other papers disagreed with the policy of their employers. The
Chicago Tribune was forced to fire one reporter who refused to
authenticate before the grand jury the printed version of his
interview with Debs. Finley Peter Dunne, through the words of
that shrewd Irish saloonkeeper Mr. Dooley, contradicted the
headlines of the Chicago EfJening Post, which carried the Mr.
Dooley columns. The EfJening Post on July 7 let its vocabulary
run wild:
THIRSTY FOR BLOOD"
Frenzied Mob Still Bent on Death and Destruction
Violence on Every Hand
But, in the same issue, Mr. Dooley delivered some pointed gibes
at George M. Pullman, who had taken his family to their man-
sion at Elberon, New Jersey, early in the strike:
This here Pullman makes th' sleepin' ca-ars an' th' consti-
tootion looks afther Pullman. He have a good time iv it. He
don't need to look afther himsilf. . . . He owns towns an'
min. . . . Whin he has throuble ivry wan on earth excipt
thim that rides in smokin' ca-ars whin they rides at all r-runs to
fight rr him. He calls out George Wash'nton an' Abraham
Lincoln an' Gin'ral Miles an' Mike Brinnan an' ivry human
bein' that rayquires limons an' ice an' thin he puts on his hat
an' lams away. 'Gintlemin,' says he, 'I must be off,' he says.
'Go an' kill each other,' he says. 'Fight it out: he says. 'Defind
the constitootion,' he says. 'Me own is not of the best,' he says,
'an' I think I'll help it be spindin' th' summer,' he says, 'piously,'
he says, 'on th' shores iv th' Atlantic ocean.'
most novel touch in this press war was provided by the
Chicago Most of them wore the strikers' white ribbon,
and they dropped those journals which opposed the boycott
into sewers.
Violence in Chicago, although abated somewhat from the
previous day, was still serious on July 7, when two separate
troops of militia were provoked into firing upon crowds of
rioters who had taunted and stoned them. Four rioters were
killed and forty wounded, some women among them. But at
no time during the disorders in Chicago was an AR U member
wounded by the police or troops. Debs had constantly argued
that the rioting was being done by thugs and riffraff, not by the
strikers, and he was determined to keep his men away from the
riots. On July 7 he again said in a speech to the ARU men:
We have repeatedly declared that we will respect law and
order, and our conduct must conform to our profession. A man
who commits violence in any form, whether a member of our
order or not, should be promptly arrested and punished and
we should be the first to apprehend the miscreant and bring
him to justice. We must triumph as law-abiding citizens or not
at all. Those who engage in force and violence are our real
enemies.
Debs was guided both by his dislike for violence and by the
example of the Great Northern strike, in which peaceful tactics
had won a great victory. Seeking to control the strikers, he and
the other ARU leaders now moved rapidly from one open-air
meeting to another. Each of them addressed from two to six
meetings a day, everywhere urging the workers to stand fast and
remain away from the railroad lines. During the entire disturb-
ance, the union did not hold a single secret meeting. The leaders
spoke on the public highways, near railroad yards or in districts
where the railroad workers lived. They moved hastily to any
scene of reported rioting and begged the crowds to returu peace-
fully to their homes.
Support for the strike continued to mount among the trade
unions. The Central Labor Union of New York City condemned
the interference of the Federal government and referred con-
temptuously to the Brotherhoods as "the Benedict Arnolds of
the labor movement." Grand Master Sovereign of the Knights
of Labor wired an urgent appeal for fair play to the President.
Sam Gompers sent a telegram to Debs: "'Have protested Tues-
day to President against base action judiciary and improper use
of military." But the acts of military tyranny continued to
multiply. Debs charged that one soldier had forced a switchman
to work at the point of a bayonet. Governor Altgeld later de-
scribed the arrest of George Lovejoy, a striking trainmaster at
LaSalle, TIlinois. Lovejoy was taken one hundred miles to
Chicago, held for two days by the police, and then was told
that they did not care to prosecute.
Debs, still trying to broaden his support. again wired on July
7 to several local labor bodies: "We ask your cooperation .
we are making a great fight for labor, and deserve the support of
an railroad employees. Capital has combined to enslave labor.
We must all stand together or go down in hopeless defeat."
Events were moving swiftly. The deadlock could not last
much longer. :In Hammond, Indiana, one man was killed and
several injured when the Army fired into a crowd of rioters. The
man killed was a respected carpenter who had no connection
with the boycott or the riots; he had gone to the railroad tracks
in search of his young son who had wandered away from home.
President Cleveland issued a proclamation which in effect de-
clared martial law for the entire area. At that time, there were
already six thousand state and Federal troops, five thousand
extra deputy marshals, and thirty-one hundred policemen, in
Chicago and vicinity.
The Chicago labor movement was infuriated by the events in
Hammond and by Cleveland's proclamation. AIl locals in the
city and the heads of seven national unions met at Uhlich's Hall,
and demanded that Samuel Gompers call an immediate session
of the AFI. executive council in Chicago. This meeting also ap-
pointed a committee to request Pullman to arbirate. If he re-
fused. a city-wide general strike would be called. The three
representatives from this meeting joined three aldermen in their
visit to Pullman, but Vice-President Wickes told the delegation
that "the Company was not able to consider the question of
arbitration." Therefore the Trades and Labor Council called a
general strike as planned, but not more than twenty-five thou-
sand men left their jobs. Thousands of others had already quit
work voluntarily in support of the strike, but the majority
preferred to await the results of the AFL executive council
session scheduled for July Ii in Chicago.
The propaganda campaign against Debs, the AR U, and Gov-
ernor Altgeld daily outdid itself. A New York minister described
Debs as the "son of a saloonkeeper, a man reared and educated
upon the proceeds of human ruin." One of his Brooklyn col-
leagues piously declared: ''The time has come when forbearance
has ceased to be a virtue. There must be some shootiug, men
must be killed, and then there will be an end of this defiance of
law and destruction of property. Violence must be met by
violence. The soldiers must use their guns. They must shoot to
kill." Dr. Lyman Abbott, one of the most prominent religious
leaders in America, attacked Altgeld as the "crowned hero and
worshiped deity of the Anarchists of the Northwest." The New
York Ti'1fU8 published sensational charges by Dr. Thomas S.
Robertson, a local physician. who claimed to have treated Debs
for dipsomania. Dr. Robertson claimed that Debs' memory and
will power had both been impaired by frequent intoxication.
"Those who knew Debs well when he was in this city;" said the
Times, "believe that his present conduct is in large measure, if
not wholly, due to the disordered cond,ition of his mind and
body. brought about by the liquor habit .. " The New York
W arld gleefully inquired: "Is Eugene V. Debs responsible for
his actions, or, indeed, is any man who once suffered from dip-
somania a competent leader of his fellow men?"
The newspapers were not deterred by the revelation of a seri.
ouS falsehood in this story. Dr. Robertson had claimed that
Robert Ingersoll had sent him to Debs. When a reporter inter-
viewed Ingersoll, hemet with a fiat denial: "I have known Mr.
Debs for twelve years at least. I also know his parents. They are
all excellent people, and 1 am their friend. Mr. Debs. I believe.
is a perfectly sincere man, being enthusiastic in the cause of
labor. and his sympathies are all with the workingmen. As to
his drinking, I can say that I never met him when he appeared
to be lIDder the influence of stimulants. He was always in good
health and in full possession of his faculties."
The end was in sight by July to. Two more men were killed by
soldiers at Spring Valley, lllinois. Another contingent of troops
was sent to Chicago, locating there a total of 1,986 Federal
soldiers." The House of Representatives approved a joint reso-
lution "endorsing prompt and vigorous action of the military
forces in suppressing interference with the mails and With inter
state commerce." A Federal grand jury also met in Chicago to
consider an indictment for conspiracy against the strike leaders.
E. M. Mulford of the Western Union Company, the sole witness
exa.mined, produced copies of all telegrams sent from ARU head
quarters during the strike. Only the most incriminating tele
grams were submitted to the grand jury; not one counselled
violence and many advised against it. But Debs, Howard,
Keliher, and Rogers were indicted for conspiracy to interfere
with interstate commerce. They were arrested at once.
When Debs was picked up, his books, personal papers, and
private unopened correspondence were seized by the Federal
marshal This act was clearly unconstitutional, and Judge
Grosscup ordered the items returned the following day. Richard
Olney later pointed to the prompt restoration of Debs' property
as an indication that the Administration had "done its best to
hold an entirely even hand as between the striker on the" one
hand and capital on the other." The four accused men were re
leased on bail of ten thousand dollars each, after they had been
held only a few hours,
Only a miracle could now save the boycott. John M. Egan,
Chairman of The Managers, had wired to the metropolitan
newspapers: "The strike was broken Monday. All roads moved
trains to-day, and to-morrow a general resumption of business
will take place." Debs was very worried when he got back to his
room in the Revere Hotel on North Clark Street-he had left
the Leland soon after the Army camped under his window. The
hotel clerk handed him a note in small. precise handwriting,
"like fine steel print," Debs thought. Eugene Field, the famous
poet who was then working for a Chicago newspaper, had sent
a prediction and an offer: "You Will soon need a friend; let me
be that friend."
[ 3 ]
EUGENE DEBS had found time to write or wire to his parents
every day since the boycott began, and Theodore Debs was with
him in Chicago. But Daisy and Daniel, both quite elderly, had
continued to worry, so on July 10 Debs' sister, Mrs. Emma
Debs Maillaux, and Kate Debs arrived in Chicago to remain
until the end of the boycott. Sensing a vital human-interest
story, the :reporters hurried to interview the strike leader's
wife. They found their story. Kate Debs didn't believe in
traipsing around the country in a cotton house dress, any
more than her husband believed in wearing overalls to union
meetings. She was boasting a gray skirt which matched her eyes
and a dotted silk blouse with puffed sleeves. With diamond
earrings, two diamond rings, a gold watch fastened to her belt,
and a double gold necklace which reached to her waist, she was
indeed a stately and imposing woman. Kate made a very favor-
able impression on the reporters by explaining that her husband
was a quiet, studious man, who had never learned to dance and
much preferred reading to social activities. When asked if she
discussed economics and politics with her husban:d, Kate re-
plied: "Oh, yes; that's all there is at our house, and I'm just as
much interested in his ideas and works as though I was one of
his men associates. I think Eugene is right and that the Ameri-
can people will sustain.him in whatever he does." "And so do
I," said Emma Maillaux quickly. "We are a very devoted
family ... and though we are scattered now, we are all just
as much interested in each other's doings and plans and hopes
as though we were back home and living together as in the old
days." But Kate Debs, in spite of her cordiality, did not end the
interview without protesting against press accounts of the boy-
cott:
148 THE BENDING c;ROSS
Some of the newspaper writers made me very indignant by
charging that Eugene had organized this. movement from mer
cenary motives. Now, that is perfectly absurd. He gets a paltry
salary of $8,000 a year. I call it paltry-and it is paltry for a man
of Mr. Debs' ability. The firemen offered him a salary of $20,000
a year to remain with them and .he refused it. He was always a
friend of the poor. His symJ?athles are always on the side of
those that are oppressed. He 18 always on the side of the under-
dog in the fight.
While it is not certain that the Brotherhood had offered Debs a
salary of twenty thousand dollars a year, it is certain that the
ARU never paid him his salary of three thousand.
By July 11, trains were moving even in California, where the
boycott had been most effective. When Mayors Pingree and
Hopkins and Erskine Phelps called on Vice-President Wickes to
again request arbitration, they met an emphatic refusaL "The
issue at question, which was simply that of reopening the shops
at Pullman, and carrying them on at a ruinous loss, was not a
proper subject for arbitration." said Mr. Wickes. Meanwhile a
committee from the Knights of Labor was conferring with the
President. They left Cleveland with the clear understanding
that a commission to, investigate the dispute would be appointed.
within a few days.
The AFL executive council met in the Briggs House in Chi-
cago on July 12, with the leaders of several other national unions
present. Gompers had ignored the boycott for more than two
weeks, and had called the conference only at the request of the
Chicago unions. Thomas J. Morgan, a Chicago socialist, even
charged that Gompers had said. "I'm going to the funeral of
the AR U," when he boarded the train in Indianapolis, but
Gompers flatly denied the charge. The first act of the executive
council was to send a wire to Cleveland asking him to attend its
meetings, and urging him to "lend your influence and give us
your aid so that the present ind ustrial crisis may be brought to
an end," but not discussing the causes of the boycott. Cleveland
did not bother to answer the telegram.
Then Debs appeared, with a request that Gompers carry to
The Managers an offer to call off the boycott if a.ll ARU mem-
bers would be rehired. Gompers refused, believing that such
THE AMERI CAN RAIL WA Y UNION 149
action would prejudice the interests of the AFL, but he offered
to accompany Debs on such a mission. The railroads would not
meet with Debs. and the AR U chief declined the offer. Becoming
angry, Debs asked the AFL to declare a sympathetic strike.
This request was very unreasonable, since the Army and the
courts would obviously crush any move to spread the strike. The
ARU was certain to be destroyed-nothing would be gained by
the added destruction 'of all other unions. Gompers, by his rigid
neutrality early in the boycott. had lost his chance to aid the
strikers. If. from June 26. the AFL had sought to keep the courts
and Federal government from entering the dispute. if it had
sought to counteract the misleading newspaper stories, if it had
tried to restrain the strikebreaking actions of the Brotherhoods,
it would have rendered great service to the strikers. By July 12.
the ship was already sinking. But Gompers' comment in his
autobiography revealed the motives for his inaction: "The
course .pursued by the Federation was the biggest service that
could have been performed to maintain the integrity of the
Railroad Brotherhoods. Large numbers of their members had
left their organizations and joined the A.R.U. It meant, if not
disruption. weakening to a very serious extent."
After discussing the situation for a full day, the executive
council issued a statement on July 18:
The public press, ever alive to the interests of corporate
wealth, have, with (ew exceptions, so
matters that in the public mind the working classes are now
in open. hostility to Fe?eral This is a posi-
bon we do not wish to be placed ro, nor will we occupy it without
a protest ...
We declare it to be the sense of this conference that a general
strike at this time is inexpedient, unwise, and contrary to the
best interests of the working people, We further recommend
that all connected with the American Federation of Labor now
out on sympa.thetic strike should return to work, and those who
contemplate going out on sympathetic strike are advised to re-
main at their usual vocations.
The statement concluded with an appeal for continued labor or-
ganization, and for the settlement of the issue at the ballot box
so that the workers could wrench the government "from the
1.50 THE BENDING CROSS
hands of the plutocratic wreckers and place it in the hands of
the common people."
The Chicago Building Trades Council at once called off its
city-wide strike, and other unions followed suit. On July 14 the
Chicago Tribune was pleased with these developments:
DEBS' STRIKE DEAD
It is Dealt Two Mortal Blows by Labor
Federation Hits First
Trades Council Follows with a Crusher
Mayor Hopkins carried to The Managers Debs' offer to call
off the boycott if all ARU members were rehired; the offer was
of course rejected. The merchants on Chicago's State Street
were so hostile to the ARU that they began a boycott of the ad-
vertising columns of the. Chicago Times, which had supported
the strikers. In Chicago the disorders were at an end. The streets
were clear, and flames no longer seared the evening skies. Train
schedules were returning to normal. George M. Pullman, who
had spent the strike in seclusion but had maintained direct con-
tact with his general offices throughout the dispute, again
showed his face to the country by issuing a statement to the
press:
The public should not permit the question which
before it to be obscured. That questIOn was as to the pOsSIbIlity
of the creation and duration of a dictatorship which could make
all the industries of the United States and the daily comfort of
millions dependent upon t.hem, hostages for .th.e of the
fantastic whim of such a dictator. Any submiSSIOn to him [Debs]
would have been a step in that direction, and in the interest
of every law-abiding citizen of the United States was not to be
considered for a moment.
For ten years Pullman had protected his employees from liquor
dealers and union organizers-he was now offering to extend the
same courtesies to everybody in the country.
But the workers at Pullman were feeling distress which ex-
ceeded their want during the previous winter. Although Mayor
John Hopkins of Chicago, owner of a large grocery, had donated
twenty-five thousand pounds of flour and the same amount of
meat to the relief fund in May, this food had been used in a few
days. Most contributions came in small drops from other work-
ers and local unions. Thomas Heathcote, on July 15, announced
that the original strikers were being starved into submission.
but the ARU refused to quit.
Fifteen meetings were held that day in Chicago, and Eugene
Debs spoke to most of them. He bitterly jibed at his old enemy:
"Grand Chief Arthur, of the engineers, is a jobber and he will go
down in history as a traitor to organized labor. He instructs his
men to work with non-unionists and tells them it is honorable.
He is a tool in the hands of the general managers." The ARU
was sending out organizers to encourage the strikers on severai
roads, and Debs still thought they would win in the Far West,
where they were better organized: "Men there are loyal, fra-
ternal and true. When they believe they are right, they all go
out and stay out until the fight is over."
Eugene Debs, a lifelong DemOcrat who three times cam-
paigned for Grover Cleveland, was deprived of faith in the major
political parties by the actioIiB of Cleveland and Olney_ He could
no longer advocate labor's adherence to parties which were
firmly controlled by the large corporations. At the last strike
meeting, Debs made a personal appeal to the workingmen: "I
am a Populist, and I favor wiping out both old parties so they
will never come into power again. I have been a Democrat all
my life and I am ashamed to admit it. I want every one of you
to go to the polls and vote the People's ticket."
On July 17, Debs and the other strike leaders were again ar-
rested on a contempt of court charge for violating the July!
injunction. This time they refused bail and were imprisoned.
The railroads, quickly seizing this opportunity to deal the strike
a last blow, sent agents to each town to tell the workers that the
men in neighboring towns had returned to work. Doubtful of
truth of these reports, the locals wired to Debs for information;
but he was in jail and unable to answer them. In this way the
strikers were tricked into returning to their jobs.
Twenty-four hours after the ARU leaders were sent to jail,
a large notice was posted on the gates at Pullman: "These gates
will be opened as soon as the number of operatives is sufficient
to make a working force in all departments." Two days later, the
United States Army left Chicago. The Debs Rebellion was over.
CHAPTER S
[ 1 ]
C
OOK COUNTY JAIL, standing at the corner of Austin
A venue and Dearborn Street in the heart of Chicago,
was a huge granite structure set around a courtyard.
Narrow windows. barred and begrimed by dirt and cobwebs,
stared like blind eyes from high in the walls. The corridors lead-
ing to the cells were gloomy, the floors slippery with slime and
tobacco spit. Eugene Debs. on July 17, 1894<, was placed in a
cell with five other men. Bunks stood three-high against the
filthy walls. The straw mattresses had mildewed and were in-
fested with vermin. The half-hundred women inmates of the
jail. moaned and sobbed so that it was impossible to sleep.
Day after day Debs watched his fellow inmates, squatting
stripped to the waist on their bunks, scratch the vermin bites
until blood ra.n down their bare chests. The prisoners never saw
the sunlight. For twenty hours each day they were locked in
their cell, without even a light to- read by; for the other four
hours they were permitted to walk through the damp corridors.
Each night they heard the eerie symphony from the women's
cell block. For a prisoner could scratch himself or
watch the giant rats run across the floor. One day, when a
deputy sheriff passed. through the corridor with a fox terrier,
Debs negotiated the loan of the dog so that it could kill the rats.
But the first sight of one of the huge, vicious rodents threw the
dog into a panic. It began to howl and whine, and the sheriff was
forced to release his pet from the cell.
Not all officials were as friendly as the sheriff with the terrier;
One guard gleefully showed Debs the death cells which had held
the Haymarket martyrs. He then showed his prisoner the cell
which had housed the assassin of Mayor Carter H.
and the rope with which this murderer had been hanged. Debs
was horrified, but he soon found tha.t this sadistic jailer was as
152
much an exception as the deputy sheriff. Neither consideration
nor deliberate cruelty was the dominant feature of Cook County
Jail. The cruelty was there, thought Debs, but it was blind, un-
thinking, callous, indifferent. The penal system was not im-
moral-it simply had never heard or thought about morality.
Preliminary hearings on the contempt of court charge were
begun before Judge William A. Woods, and the ARU leaders
spent the day hearing Edwin Walker denounce the Debs Re-
bellion. But Debs' confidence in the righteousness of his cause
remained unshaken. "Having only acted in this matter in
obedience to the dictates of our conscience and our judgment,"
he wrote to Henry Demarest Lloyd on July !!4, "we shall accept
with philosophic composure any penalties, however severe, the
courts may see fit to impose. The one great result of this agita-
tion has been to call the attention of the country to the flagrant
abuses of corporate power of which working people have so long
been the patient and uncomplaining victims. I am inclined to be
optimistic and do not hesitate to believe that all these things
are making for the emancipation and redemption of men from
the thraldom that has so long been theirs in slavery and deg-
rada tion." The next day the hearings were set over lDltil
September 5 due to the illness of Edwin Walker, and the pris-
oners were again released on bond.
Debs returned to Terre Haute, where he immediately became
ill and was forced to spend two weeks in bed. The strain and
unrelenting labor of the boycott, followed by his anguish for the
inmates of the jail, had bitten deep into his great strength. Nor
had the end of the strike ended his worries. The ARU leaders,
when they were first arrested on July 10, had been forced to
. accept bond money from several politicians. They disliked being
under obligation to these men, and had immediately begun
efforts to raise bail from other sources. Although Henry Lloyd
and Florence Kelley had taken the lead in the campaign to
procure bail, many of the erstwhile liberals in Chicago had re-
fused to help the strike leaders. The bulk of the ARU legal fund
finally came from the labor movement, including contributions
of nearly eight hundred dollars from the AFL. "In presenting
this to you," Gompers wrote, "we desh-e to convey more elo-
T'RE BENDING CROSS
quently than I can find words to express our unqualified dis-
approval of the attempts on the part of government officials
and the courts in throwing the weight of their influence in..favor
of corporate wealth and against the most necessary, useful and
liberty loving people of the country-the wageworkers. We
offer it to you as a protest against the exercise of class justice,
and as a further protest against the violation of rights guaran-
teed by the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."
[ ~ ]
THE BOYCOTr had attracted too much attention to pass easily
from the headlines, now that it had been broken. The feudal
conditions which caused the initial strike, the nationwide tie-up
of the railroads, the intervention of the Federal government, the
dispute between Cleveland and Altgeld, the wild charges against
the strikers, had combined to make the Pullman boycott the
biggest news story of 1894. Thirty persons had been killed and
twice as many injured during the riots, according to John
Swinton. In Chicago alone, thirteen were killed and fifty-three
seriously injured. More than seven hundred men had been ar-
rested. Bradstreet's estimated that the boycotthad caused a total
loSs to the country of eighty million dollars. The railroads had
lost nearly five million dollars in profits, and a hundred thou-
sand' railroad workers had suffered lost wages of one million,
four hundred thousand dollars. At the height of the outbreak,
there had been more than fourteen thousand law enforcement
officers in Chicago.
The press campaign against the strikers was undiminished.
Harper's Weekly, on July ~ l featured a cover cartoon of a pa-
rade, led by Populist Senator William Peffer and Governors
Waite, Pennoyer, and Altgeld. King Debs rode on a litter borne
by the strikers, who also carried a skull, torch, dagger, and a
banner emblazoned, "A1l.archy." The New York Tribune, fol.
lowing the viewpoint of George M. Pullman's statement of
July 14, again charged that Debs was a self-seeking dictator:
"One lesson of great importance should be learned from the
past few weeks. Working people should be able to see the danger
of surrendering their liberty and prosperity into the hands of a
single individual."
Meanwhile at Pullman, the former employees were learning
"the danger of surrendering their liberty and prosperity into the
hands of a single individual." Every applicant for work was re-
quired to sign a yellow-dog contract, that he would
not join a union. One veteran employee refused to yield up his
ARU card-he said that would involve giving up his principles
and "his rights as an American citizen." Fully 25 per cent of the
men hired at Pullman were new employees. There was acute suf-
fering among the residents, and, when the company refused to
act in any way-to reduce rents or stagger work-Governor
Altgeld issued a proclamation which called for a public relief
fund. Even the Chicago Tribune, admitting the starvation at
Pullman, cooperated in raising the fund. But Altgeld had not
finished; he also stated that the Pullman Company had each
year for several years defrauded the state of Illinois of more than
six hundred thousand dollars in taxes.
President Cleveland, under a law which he had pushed
through Congress in 1889 and in accord with his promise to the
Knights of Labor, appointed a commission to investigate the
boycott on two railroads, the Illinois Central and the Rock
Island. This commission, composed of Carroll D. Wright, the
United States Commissioner of Labor, and two other prominent
men, began hearings in Chicago on August 15. Railroad execu-:
tives,labor leaders, strikers, public officials, were all asked about
their roles in the boycott. The printed proceedings of the Com-
mission took nearly a thousand pages.
In his testimony, Eugene Debs said that there would not be
a single labor union in the world if employers had dealt honor-
ably with their workers, but that unions would continue as long
as injustice existed. In reply to the argument that the boycott
should never have been called, Debs pointed out that men
would have continued to work fourteen hours a day if they had
not struck for their rights. A strike is always justified in opposi-
tion to tyranny, regardless of the consequences: "It seems to
me that if it were not for resistance to degrading conditions, the
tendency of our whole civilization would be downward; after a
while we would reach the point where there would be no re-
sistance, and slavery would come." Contending that strikes
would occur until the government owned and operated the rail-
roads "in the interest of the people instead of for private gain,"
Debs said that he believed in a co-operative commonwealth as
the solution to economic problems. He denied that he was a
socialist because his ideas had come from Laurence Gronlund
rather than Karl Marx; he also said that his mind was not
fixed and he was still studying the problem.
The commission's report, which was released in November,
was so favorable to the ARU that several railroads and news-
papers intimated that it had been written by the union, a charge
Debs vehemently denied. But he had good reason to be pleased
with the conclusions of the commission. The AR U was criti-
cized on two grounds: its constitution did not contain an ex-
plicit condemnation of violence, and it had admitted the Pull-
man employees, who were not railroad workers, to membership.
But the report denounced Pullman's refusal to arbitrate and
also exposed the railroads' conspiracy to reduce wages and
destroy the union. The blame for the boycott, said the o m ~
mission, "rests with the people themselves and with the gov-
ernment for not adequately controlling monopolies and corpo-
rations, and for failing to reasonably protect the rights of labor
and redress its wrongs." Compulsory arbitration was recom-
mended as insurance against future railroad strikes. Debs, while
he opposed this recommendation, was grateful that the facts of
the dispute had been clearly stated and gave the report his
"unq ualified approval."
[ 3 ]
As SEPTEMBER 10 drew near, the date of the BLF convention in
Chicago, Debs thought with joy and regret about his twenty
years within its ranks. He had believed in it deeply and given it
his full power of body and mind during its rapid growth. Only
near the end had he begun to feel that the Brotherhood's nu-
merical strength concealed a shameful flabbiness of fiber. The
fault was not in the men, but in the principles of the organiza-
tion. Debs firmly believed in the labor movement as a means of
education and battle, but he had seen meeting after meeting
spent in initiation ceremonies, with the recruits wearing halters
around their necks and performing silly rituaL Grieving at the
difference between the possibility and the reality, Debs had gone
home in disgust to read and to study. The Brotherhood, he
thought, was high dues, broken strikes, and a missed oppor-
tunity. Its inner circle was too small; it knew too few men as
brothers.
But Debs' sadness had never become bitterness. Even after
he helped to organize the American Railway Union, he had con-
tinued to advise allnremen to join the Brotherhood. He had not
used The Magazine to publicize the ARU-the Great Northern
strike received one brief paragraph, and the Pullman boycott a
single article. Even when the Brotherhood had actively worked
against the ARU in these labor struggles, Debs had refrained
from any attacks on its leaders. So when, on September 5, 1894,
he wrote a letter resigning from The Magazine, its dominant
notes we:re pride, nostalgia, and friendship_ Without one word
in criticism of the Brotherhood, Debs said simply that he had
tried to resign two years earlier, but had been persuaded to
continue "at no little sacrifice of a sense of duty." Now his
obligation had expired, and he wished to be relieved as soon as
his successor was elected and qnalified. The memories of good
times, of battles won and lost, the sense of a common cause,
merged in Debs' avowal of deep fraternity: In submitting my
resignation I avail myself of the occasion of tendering to the
delegates of the convention assurances that old time associations
are not forgotten, and of wishing each and all the largest meas-
ures of prosperity attainable under labor's unfortunate environ-
ments."
The matter, as Debs learned, was not to be settled so easily.
His friends at the convention soon notiDed him that he was
being viciously attacked as selfish, as corrupt, as showing favor-
itism by hiring his sister Emma and his brother Theodore. It
was charged that he had been dishonorable in keeping the
editorship of The Magazine while he worked to destroy the
Brotherhood. A delegate from VIgO Lodge, Debs' own local in
IDS
THE BENDING CROSS
Terre Haute, was even reading clippings from the capitalist
newspapers to prove that Debs was a dictator, a drunkard, and
a racketeer. A campaign was afoot to refuse his resignation and
then to discharge him under prejudice, yet he had not been
asked to appear in his own defense. Without waiting for an
invitation, Debs went to Chicago.
On the afternoon of September 18, it was announced to the
convention that Eugene Debs was in the anteroom, and re-
quested permission to speak. By order of Frank Sargen t, he was
admitted to the hall and escorted to the platform: "I address
this body from a point of right and justice; I never go where I
am not wan ted and I willlea ve it to a majority here to decide if I
am to be heard. . I came here to respond to all charges and
innuendo affecting my character. I leave it to you whether I
shall be heard in my own defense or not." When Sargent called
for a vote, not a man in the room was willing to raise his hand in
opposition, so Debs began his answer to the charges. "In all my
life I have never directly, or indirectly, injured the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Firemen." He had always urged the members to
stay with the organization, and he had continued his efforts tQ
win new adherents.
But he was unable to agree with many policies of the Brother-
hood: "You can never succeed with the men divided in separate
organizations. If engineers have a grievance the firemen will
have none. An injury to one should be an injury to all. It is
wrong to be separate. The corporations do not take this view of
it; when a road becomes involved in a strike the other roads, the
newspapers, the banks and all the rest come to the rescue. I wish
that labor might follow the example set by capital. This is the
only way you will ever support yourselves."
Debs bitterly attacked the claim that labor must wait for the
slow movement of public opinion to support it: "I care nothing
about public sentiment. Public sentiment hanged John Brown.
I haven't forgotten that public sentiment supported slavery for
years. If organized labor has a mission it is to make war on the
public sentiment that makes these conditions possible. What are
the brotherhoods going to do to relieve this calamity? What are
any of these organizations going to do to relieve this calamity?
I do not believe that this brotherhood will move the country
upward in one hundred years."
The lodge meetings of the Brotherhood were "a farce" when
they should be a schoolroom to educate the firemen: "Intelli-
gence is what is required; ceremonies give no returns." The
beneficiary features of the union had caused it to expel three
thousand men a year for nonpayment of dues. This was wrong,
no man should be compelled to carry insurance if he couldn't
afford it. The federation of the brotherhoods was founded on
false principles, because a strike could be blocked by the vote
of a single grand officer in any brotherhood. This placed despotic
power in the hands of men like P. M. Arthur, "the worst enemy
of labor today. He is the owner of a paper that fights labor, he is
the director of a bank and the railways endorse him; and they
say that I am the opposite. No man can be a. friend of a corpo-
ration and a friend of labor. A railway official may be friendly
with you personally, but he is subservient to those above him.
I am one of those who believe that no railroad man gets too
much wages, there are many not getting enough."
The Brotherhoods prided themselves on being craft unions,
said Debs, but they were not. There were engine wipers who be-
longed to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The r a i n ~
men's union had organized five hundred firemen and thousands
of switchmen. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen held
ten thousand engineers, five thousand hostlers and other crafts,
and only nine thousand firemen. There were forty thousand
firemen in the United States, but only ten thousand in the un-
ions-"at that rate you will have the firemen organized in
sixty years."
No brotherhood had ever won a strike. They had lost on the
Burlington, the Ann Arbor, the Lehigh Valley, the New York
elevated lines. And they never would win a strike until they
amalgamated their unions into one solid organization. When the
General Managers Association conspired to reduce wages; it
was the ARU that blocked the plan. Wages were slashed on the
Louisville & Nashville, the Big Four, the Union Pacific, the
Northern Pacific. Then they tried the same trick on the Great
Northern: "That's where we stopped them .... The General
Managers Association had books printed giving uniform wages
so that they could say that they could pay no more than other
lines. Then they would make more reductions until they had
their men down to the level or-slaves." Was it treason to oppose
the suicidal policies of the Brotherhoods? In God's name, how
long would they continue their disastrous retreat?
He had been called selfish and grasping. He could have earned
far more money in other jobs. A career had been open in poli-
tics; a job had been offered as head of the American Press
Association. But he had chosen to make sacrifices for the labor
movement, and other members of his family had shared those
sacrifices. Emma had resigned & seventy-five-J.ollar-a-month
job teaching school to help <him. Theodore had begun at ten
dollars a week but not one cent had ever been defaulted in his
accounts. Was this selfishness? Time after time the railroade
had tried to bribe him. Time after time the Brotherhood. had
tried to raise his salary. But he had always refused. Then he
resigned his four-th01lS1l.lld-dollar-a-year job to work for the
ARU at seventy-five dollars a month. Was that selfish? He had
tried in 8 9 ~ to resign from the Brotherhood, and in 1894 to re-
sign from the ARU: "Has Mr. Arthur ever tendered his resig":
nation? The railroad organizations would unite today but for
the grand officers. I make you this proposition, I and my as-
sociates, my colleagues, will resign if the other grand officers
will resign. Will Mr. Arthur, Mr. Wilkinson, or Mr. Clark ac-
cept this proposition? Yet they say I am selfish. I want you to
unify; it doesn't matter how much you unify; you can wipe out
the llB.IIle A.R. U. but you must unify. . Railway corpo-
rations use one organization to defeat another .... In the late
strike of the A.R.U. members of the brotherhoods took their
places and in many insta:ooes took their own brothers' places.
Who profited? The railway companies relied on the brother--
hoods. I make the prediction that Mr. Arthur will never order
anoth.er strike. He knows t.ha.t for every man that would strilre
there are forty ready to take his job. I do not approve of this
but it is a fact. .. I am not criticizing you, I am only telling
the truth."
Debs had joined the Brotherhood when hewas only nineteen
years old. For two decades pe had been a loyal member. He had
worked for its advancement, gone hungry for it, thought for it,
and battled for it. He had ridden in freight cars over thousands
of miles; he had been dropped off on the desert and into snow
4
drifts. He had spent thousands of dollars of his own money to
organize the firemen. There had been no complaints, because it
was a righteous cause. And in all of the charges against him,
nobody had accused him of being on the side of the corporations.
He had spent eight days in Cook County Jail as a prote1lt
against inhumanity. He was not sotty for that. He only wished
the labor would unite to defend themselves: "I
will say to you individually and collectively, I wish you well.
. I assure you that you will always have my cordial support.
and if you will do what I believe should be done. you will unify
the railway labor of the country."
He had tried to do his duty as he understood it. For that he
had no apologies. and he would accept like a man any blame that
attached to his actions. He had no bitterness, no rancor, simply
a hope that the workers would understand each other better
than they had in the past. All differences should be discussed
honestly and with compassion. As for himself. he would always
be found at the side -of the workingmen: "I have this for the
men who know me and believe in me. I hope my hand may be
paralyzed and my eyes blinded if ever I do aughfagainst labor.
About the rest that my enemies have said about me I have
nothing to say ... From the depths of my heart I thank you
and wish you prosperity."
The speech had been a forceful and moving statement, but
there was nobody there to applaud---Debs' supporters had gone
down to defeat with the ARU. His message was received in
silence, and he sadly left the hall and returned to Terre Haute.
I ]
THE CoNGRESSIONAL ELE(.'TIONS OF 1894 were filled with mean-
ing for the labor movement. Both of the major parties had
watched with folded hands the advent of the depression. They
bad failed to .reduce significantly the high tariff. They had failed
to increase the volume of money in circulation. They had failed
to introduce a graduated income tax. In 1892 a Republican
President, Benjamin Harrison, had used the United States
Army to break the Coeur d'Alene strike. Two years later a
Democratic President, Grover Cleveland, h.ad used the Army to
break the Pullman boycott. Many working men were persuaded
that their sole hope for salvation lay in support of the Populists.
Eugene.Debs held this view. In his speech to the Firemen's con-
vention, he had said: ''You say labor organizations do not dis-
cuss politics. I would have labor to unify at the polls and vote
for an independent people's party. Some say politics mean
destruction to labor organizations, but the rever.se is true. There
are questions I would like to see labor interest themselves in.
Their conditions are like a cancer, you can cover it with a poul-
tice but the cancer continues to spread. You must apply the
knife and root it out if you expect relief.
YO
Contending that the
depression was premeditated and a bankers' panic, Debs had
said, "If we could but destroy the money monopoly, land mo-
nopoly, and the rest of them, all would be different."
Quarrels about policy ran deep in the trade unions. Debs, for
his part, regarded political action and collective bargaining ~
inseparable parts of the fight against the employers. Under
present conditions, support of the People's Party seemed the
most effective way of pressing that fight. but the trade unions
should preserve their separate identity and not abandon the
economic field, thought Debs. In every past depression, the
American trade unions had tended to dissolve as working-class
organizations in favor of political action, producers' co-oper-
ation, money reform, or some other panacea; this mistake was
now being repeated by the Knights of Labor and several leaders
of the ARU. The ruling circles in the Brotherhoods had largely
abandoned both the economic and political fights in order to
conciliate the employers, but many ~ n k and file members would
vote for the Populists. The position of the AFL was still un-
decided in August, 1894. Although several affiliated unions and
state federations were working for the People's Party, Samuel
Gompers and the other top leaders continued to equivocate.
It was in Illinois that a labor-Populist alliance had first been
effected, and TIlinois now supplied the tacticians to bring the
entire AFL into the Populist column. These tacticians were not
from the ranks of either labor or the farmers, but were profes-
sional men long sympathetic to both. The most important was
Henry Demarest Lloyd, a millionaire journalist who had been
financial editor and editorial writer for the Chicago Tribune
from 1873 to 1885. After 1885 Lloyd devoted his great ability
to writing and lecturing against the monopolies; in 1894 he
published his Wealth Against Commonwealth, a documented and
caustic attack on the Standard Oil Corporation, which was the
pioneer muckraking volume and instantly became a classic of
the reform movement.
Lloyd, recognizing the strategic position held by Gompers,
had used both flattery and logic in his attempt to win over the
AFL chieftain. His efforts proved fruitless. Gompers had de-
clared, in a letter to Debs after the Pullman strike, that "the
end of the struggle of the masses is not yet," but he disagreed
with the strategy being followed by Debs and Lloyd. The Coeur
d'Alene, Homestead, Buffalo, and Pullman disturbances had
shown that labor could not win a strike against the power of the
government. All previous political ventures by labor had weak-
ened the trade unions, thought Gompers. So he now discouraged
strikes and also used his great influence to keep the AFL from
endorsing the Populists. By rejecting the People's Party, the
AFL was forced to choose between the antilabor Democrats and
the antilabor Republicans. In a misdirected blow at Grover
Cleveland, it chose the Republicans.
Debs, Lloyd, Clarence Darrow, Lyman Trumbull, Joe Bu-
chanan, and other prominent men spearheaded the drive to
bring labor into the Populists' columns, centering their fire on
the injunction and government favoritism toward corporations.
Their efforts met with limited success. In the November elec-
tion, the large Democratic majority in Congress was replaced
by an even larger Republican majority. The Populists, although
they received a half-million more votes than in 8 9 ~ saw their
Congressional . delegation drop from fourteen to ten. Henry
Demarest LlQyd in Chicago and Joseph R. Buchanan in Newark
were both defeated in their campaigns for Congress, making it
164
THE BENDING CROSS
clear that most workingmen did not regard the People's Party
as their political champion.
5 J
AT THE TIME of the November election, the ARU leaders w ~
all facing possible terms in prison. Judge William A. Woods had
sentenced Debs to six months in jail and the others to three
months for violating the July 2 injunction; they had immedi-
atelyappealed to the United States Supreme Court for writs of
habeas corpus to test the court order. Far more serious, how-
ever, were the possible consequences of the indictment for con-
spiracy to obstruct a mail train. on the Rock Island Railroad.
Judge Peter Grosscup had set over the trial on this charge from
December until January 8, 1895, so that the defendants could
spend the holidays with their families.
Eugene Debs failed to appear at Woodstock jail on January 7,
the time and place set by the judge. He was not even abashed to
be tardy. Although he explained that he had eaten too many cu-
cumbers and become ill, the rumors gave intoxication as t ~
true cause of his delinquency. Nor was that all. On the second
day of his trial for conspiracy, Debs issued a press release about
his conviction for contempt of court:
In going to jail for participation in the late strike, we ha ve no
apologies to make nor regrets to express. I would not change
places with Judge Woods, and if it is expected that six months,
or even six years, in jail will purge me of contempt, the punish-
ment will fail of its purpose. .
Candor compels me to characterize the whole proceeding as
infamous. I t is not calculated to revive the rapidly failing con-
fidence of the American people in the Federal judiciary. There
is not a scrap of testimony to show that one of us violated any
law whatsoever. If we are guilty of conspiracy. why are we
punished for contempt?
I would a thousand times rather be accountable for the strike
than for the decision.
The defense attorneys were Clarence Darrow and S. S. Greg-
ory, former city solicitor of Chicago and later president of the
American Bar Association. The prosecution was conducted by
T. M. Milchrist, John C. Black, and Edwin Walker. As soon as a
jury had been sworn, Gregory began to indict the prosecution.
He objected to the presence of Edwin Walker for the govern-
ment on the grounds that Walker was still in the employ of the
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. Judge Grosscup over-
ruled the objection. Darrow took an even more accusing tone
in his opening remarks to the jury: "I believe Mr. Milchrist is a
humane man who believes in the law, and in the excuse of the
law as a means of working But Mr. Milchrist in this
case is simply a puppet in the hands of the great railway cor-
porations in this persecution, not prosecution." The defense at-
torneys pointed out that not a single man actually guilty
of obstructing the mail trains had been indicted, but the leaders
of the union had been brought into court under the catch-aU
and tyrannical doctrine of conspiracy. There was absolutely no
evidence to support the charge, said Darrow; every session of
the ARU convention had been open to reporters except for one
executive committee meeting which was called to consider
finances. After the Pullman boycott began, the union held no
secret meeting$. Throughout the disturbances it had warned its
members against violence. It had offered to move any mail
trains which might be tied up.
Every day for nearly a month the defendants were brought
the. fifty miles from Woodstock, Illinois, where they were being
held, to the courtroom in Chicago. Woodstock was a clean, al-
most homelike jail, and Debs again became his natty self. Dar-
row, stoop-shouldered, slouchy, drawling, wore clothes which
looked as if he had slept in them. and often he had. But Debs
appeared in a well-tailored grey tweed suit, a hard white colla.r,
a fashionable black and white tie, and a boutonniere. When the
ARU chief took the stand to testify about his ca.reer on the rail-
roads, he looked like a minister or a businessman. The jury was
impressed by his quiet recitation of the facts, but equally im-
portant were his benign manner, gold-rimmed eyeglasses, and
gentle face.
Darrow continued to carry the fight to the prosecution. He
had the advantage, and he pressed it vigorously. The union's
habit of operating in the public view contrasted sharply with
the railroad executives' lack of candor. The leaders of the Gen-
eral Managers Association were put on the stand, and they tes-
tified that they could "not remember" what had happened at
their meetings. Debs charged them with perjury; they were not
indicted. George M. Pullman refused to appear in court in
answer to a subpoena; he was not punished. The prosecution
was clearly losing the case when a juror became ill on Feb-
ruary 8. Four days later Judge Grosscup discharged the jury
and continued the case until May. As soon as he announced his
decision, several jurymen crowded around the defendants and
congratulated them on the outcome of the case. Clarence Dar-
row later claimed that the jury, when discharged, had stood
eleven to one for acquittal But Debs and Darrow were not
pleased; they wanted to argue the case through on its merits.
In spite of their repeated challenges to the prosecution to bring
the defendants back into court, the trial was never reopened.
The final act in the legal drama was pJayed in Washington,
D.C. In January, the United States Supreme Court had denied
a defense motion for a writ of error in the contempt of court
conviction. Three months Jater the application for habeas corpus
was argued before the court by Gregory, Darrow, and Lymat'.
Trumbull. Trumbull, formerly on the Illinois Supreme Court
and then a Federal Senator, had been a close friend and politi-
cal associate of Lincoln. Originally a Democrat, he had become
a Republican over the sJavery issue and had returned to the
Democrats because of his disgust at the corrupt ring surround-
ing President Grant. In his later years he had become steadily
more radical, more friendly to labor. In 1894, when he was more
than i ~ t y years old, he campaigned for the Populists.
Trumbull's plea for habeas corpus followed a simple line of
reasoning. His brief pointed out that it was legal to strike. There-
fore, if the defendants had erred at all, their error must have
been a criminal act. The Constitution guaranteed trial by jury
in all criminal cases, but the ARU leaders were now being jailed
without benefit of a jury trial. The Same judge who issued the
injunction had pronounced sentence for its violation. This pro-
cedure, argued Trumbull, was grossly unconstitutional. It set
up the judges as virtual dictators over the lives of American
citizens. H it were permitted to stand, liberty would be crushed
by judicial despotism. The much-vaunted government by laws
would become a government by men.
But he failed to convince the Supreme Court, which denied
the petition for habeas corpus without even entering into the
question of the scope of the Sherman Act, on which the in-
junction had been based. The Supreme Court also avoided any
pronouncement on the specific terms of the injunction, but
merely ruled that the equity powers of the Federal courts could
be used to prevent obstruction of the mails and interference
with interstate commerce. -An injunction, regardless of the
validity of its provisions, must be obeyed. Violation could be
punished by a jail sentence. Eugene Debs and his fellows were
now returned to Woodstock jail to serve their terms.
CHAPTER 9
{ 1 ]
TIE
McHENRY COUNTY JAIL was merely a few
cells in the home of Sheriff George Eckert. Eckert
. proved to be, if not sympathetic to Debs' manifesto, at
least sympathetic toward his prisoners. A group of farmers from
the surrounding area called at the jail to threaten lynching and
to ask the sheriff to treat his prisoners rough, but Eckert said
they would be treated like everybody else. The sheriff, believing
the AR U leaders were in no sense criminals, gave them an in-
credible degree of freedom. The seven prisoners ate their meals
with the sheriff's family, played football in the street behind the
jail, and received all the liberty that the rules permitted. They
were locked in their cells at night, but nobody took this formal-
ity very seriously. There were no uniforms-the prisoners wore
their business suits and white linen. Each morning Debs placed
a fresh carnation in his buttonhole.
The seven ARU chiefs wasted no time in demonstrating that
they were born organizers. They elected officers for the duration
of their terms, and named their new creation the Co-operative
Colony of Liberty Jail. Each morning they rose at six o'clock
and did an hour's military drill before breakfast. Sheriff Eckert
kindly let them use his rifle for their exercises. At 7 :30 they had a
breakfast of a steak or chops, fried potatoes, and coffee in the
Eckert's dining room. They then studied economics and history
until noon from their library of two hundred volumes, which
included the Utopian socialist writings of Gronlund, Bellamy,
and Robert Blatchford. Debs read Victor Hugo and Eugene
Sue, but he also glanced through several Fabian essays, the
works of Henry George, and Wealth Against Commonwealth.
Henry Demarest Lloyd, who had sent a complimentary copy
of his classic to Debs the previous December, now did the same
favor forthe other prisoners.
168
From noon until one o'clock the prisoners exercised with
dumbbells and chest weights. They had a beef roast for lunch,
studied until 6 P.M., and again had military drill before their
supper of cold meat, bread, and milk. From 8 until 10 every
evening they debated under the direction of L. W. Rogers, who
had taught school before' he became a brakeman in 1880. This
program worked quite well. There were few violations of the
self-imposed rules, and the elected officers ~ d power to punish
the delinquents by locking them in their cells. The only dis-
ruptor was George Howard. who resigned from the ARU dur-
ing his term in jail to become national secretary of the American
Industrial Union. Howard was convinced that their attorneys
had badly miahandled the legal defense; he had opposed making
the appeal and had wanted simply to serve his term. in the be-
ginning.
Debs' part in the Pullman strike and his imprisonment had
made him a national celebrity. He was forced to hire a secre-
tary in order to keep abreast of the hundred letters which came
each. day from ARU members. cranks, panacea advocates, and
some of the best thinkers in America. The post office at Wood-
stock was buried under a stack of mail for Debs, including doz-
ens. of socialist books and pamphlets. But he was kept so busy
answering his correspondence and granting. newspaper inter-
views that. he seldom had time for serious study. Reporters
came from the Chicago Chronicle. the New York World, the
Cincinnati Enquirer. from papers large and small across the
country. Debs often received these reporters in the sheriff's
dining room, where there was a chair with wide arms on which
the interviewer could rest his notebook. One journalist found
Debs refereeing a football game among his fellow inmates. They
had blocked off the street behind the jail and strung ropes be-
tween trees to serve as goal p<)sts. Debs complained that he Was
unable to play because he had wrenched his foot the previous
day trying to kick the ball.
Eugene Debs, while confined in McHenry County Jail, was
more prominent in national affairs than he had ever been in his
life. His opinion was sought on every conceivable subject. Debs
said that he favored John Peter Altgeld for President, and pre-
dicted that the Pullman strike would "tremendously" increase
the Populist vote in 1896. He then took his feet down from their
resting place on the bars to emphasize the next point: "if that
party's convention .. formulate[s} a platform upon which the
great mass of reformers, be they socialists, single taxers, trade
unionists, or what not, can unite and harmonize, they will, in
1896, take at least second place, and in 1900 at the latest, sweep
the country." He then said that he favored free silver, but
thought it would benefit the people "to a limited extent and
this only for an inconsequential period." Arbitration seemed to
him a poor solution for labor disputes: "If it is compulsory, it is
vicious in principle, and if it is voluntary it can't be enforced."
When Nellie Bly, the small and gentle woma,.n reporter who
had become famous by circling the world in seventy-two days,
visited Woodstock, Debs had grown a sandy beard and his
face looked much fuller than previously. Debs spoke softly and
without rancor, telling Nellie Bly that his only hardship was the
enforced separation from his parents. On July 18, the day after
the boycott collapsed, Daisy and Daniel had sent a telegram
to their son: "Stand by your principles, regardless of conse-
quences." They had received no newspapers during the boy-
cott, but they had been unable to shut out the cries of newsboys
in the street. They had been driven frantic with worry and ap-
prehension, but nothing could make them retreat from their
place at Debs' side. This relation between parents and children
had grown steadily, through a realization of common beliefs
and sacrifices shared. Almost every Sunday night, Debs had
contrived to be at his parents' home in Terre Haute, even though
it often meant a trip of several hundred miles to fulfill the obli-
gation. During the great boycott, he had wired or written to
them each day. The devotion was mutual and steadfast.
So the weeks passed, with Debs frittering away in corres-
spondence and interviews a period that he could have used for
scrupulous study. He worked hard to collect, in his sentimental
fashion, a complete scrapbook of all documents bearing on the
Pullman boycott. He not only wrote for Altgeld'sanriual address
to the Illinois legislature, in which the governor had caustically
attacked the use of the injunction and the Army, he also wrote
THE AMERICAN RAIL WAY UNION 171
to Richard Olney in order to get a copy of Olney's arguments.
Debs never resented the actions of the Attorney-General; in
1908 the secretary of the Interstate Commerce Commission
said in a letter to Olney: "Eugene Debs was in the office a few
days ago, and has repeated what he said before. 'He esteemed
you as an absolutely honest man, and in sending him to prison
you only did your duty as the laws existed:" Certainly Debs,
by this admission, weakened his fight against the injunction,
but Olney did send him the requested briefs and report.
Debs drew great strength from the loyalty of the ARU mem-
bers and his personal friends. James Whitcomb Riley, although
he was indifferent to strikes and politics, had made an anony-
mous contribution to the legal defense fund merely because he
was certain that Debs could never commit a crime. When Debs
wrote to the poet for material to be used in the Railway Times,
Riley denied the request because he was, "aside from magazine
work, at labor on two separate books," but he sent Debs his
best wishes and a volume of humor. Riley did not even mention
in his letter that Debs was in jail. Another famous poet, Eugene
Field, also remained true to the note he had sent Debs during
the critical days of the boycott. Field had visited Terre Haute
for a lecture in December, 1894, and had met Debs at the home
of a mutual friend. Field, hearing children in an adjoining room,
quietly disappeared from the reception in his honor. Soon
joyous shouts came from behind the closed door. When Debs
investigated, he found Field down on his hands and knees,
minus his tuxedo jacket, in the middle of a group of screaming,
excited children. After that Debs, too, was lost to adult com-
pany for the evening. Field had defended Debs in the days
when the newspapers were heaping abuse on the strike leader's
head, and had even attacked his fellew journalists:
The gentlemen who write so bitterly against Mr. E. V. Debs in
out contemporaries are certainly unacquainted with him; we
will not believe they would wittingly misrepresent so sincere. so
loyal and so kindly a man. We do not question his sincerity
because we know him personally . . . If ye be ill, or poor, or
starving, or oppressed, or in grief, your chances for sympathy
and for succor from E. V. Debs are 100 where your chances with
G. M. Pullman would be the little end of nothing whittled down.
172
THE BENDING CROSS
The brief acquaintance of Debs and Field had proved sufficient
for a deep friendship, and one morning Debs received a note
from Field: "You are now settled in your summer quarters, and
I'll soon be out to see you;" But the promise was never kept;
two days later Debs read in the newspaper that the poet had
suddenly fallen dead.
On August 22, all of the ARU leaders except Debs completed
their three-month terms and were released. They intended to
return to their homes for brief vacations, and then to take up
once more the arduous task of rebuilding the wrecked union.
They had made several organizing trips during their brief pe-
riods of freedom between the boycott and the beginning of their
jail terms in March, 1895. These trips had shown that the or-
ganization was in a wretched condition. The railroads were
blatantly discriminating against ARU members. In some cases
railroad executives even boasted about their use of the black.
list; when the superintendent of the Southern Pacific was asked
if he would try to have the ex-strikers discharged from other
jobs they might find, he replied: "Yes. If I know that a man was
not true to his company, and if I find out that he has got a job
elsewhere, I will pursue him and use my best efforts to have him
discharged. Those fellows who killed our engines, destroyed our
cars and track and murdered our employes shall never earn
bread and butter in California if I can help it." Many railroaders
remained stanch advocates of the ARU, but most of them were
unable to pay dues. The union's income fell o ~ s o sharply that
it closed the Chicago offices and moved its headquarters to
Debs' home in Terre Haute. But the actual headquarters were
in Woodstock jail, where Debs edited the Railway Times, and
conducted his immense correspondence. The union's stationery
now bore the message: "This letter is written from McHenry
County Jail, Woodstock, Dl. Address all official correspondence
to Terre Haute, Indiana." And Sheriff Eckert did not interfere
with this humorous propaganda, although the stream of visi-
tors was a genuine nuisance.
Debs had no complaints about his situation. In July he had
been notified that his application for a pardon was being con-
sidered by the Justice Department. He indignantly replied
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION 1'1S
that he had made no such application, that he was entitled to
his freedom as a matter of justice and refused to accept it as a
matter of mercy. As soon as Debs' colleagues were released,
Kate Debs arrived in Woodstock. Kate was grateful that the
McHenry County Jail was such an improvement over that in
Chicago, where she had also visited her husband. She intended
to remain in Woodstock until Debs had finished his sentence,
and immediately set to work helping with his correspondence.
Every afternoon Debs worked on his jot> of editing the Railway
TimeB. which he had largely usurped from Rogers when they
were imprisoned. He wrote to dozens of men for editorial con-
tributions to the paper-Henry Lloyd, James Whitcomb Riley,
President John McBride of the AFL, Clarence Darrow. When
he received an article, Debs sat down at the heavy pine table
in his cell and worked over the copy with his blue-pencil and
scissors. The cell soon became a perfect replica of a newspaper
office, even to the cockroaches which Bitted across the table.
But Debs could no more work on the Railway Ti'lM3 than he
could study. He was a celebrity. a key figure, and the socialists
made strenuous efforts to convert him to their philosophy. In
1893 he had sCarcely been conscious of the socialist movement;
the next year he had occasionally read the radical publications;
by 1895 he had subscribed to the Coming Nation, which was
published by J. A. Way1and and then by A. S. Edwards at
Ruskin, Tennessee. When he was sent to Woodstock, the heavi-
est guns in the socialist battery began to give him personal at-
tention. Victor Berger, a stolid, learned German immigrant
who published the Milwaukee V OT'U)(lIjrts, visited Debs, talked for
hours in his ponderous manner, and left behind him a copy of
Marx's Capital. Debs tried to read it, butitseemed awfully dull;
he was more attracted to the works of Ka.rl Kautsky and the
popularizers.
Berger was followed by Keir Hardie, an English trade unionist
and socialist then lecturing in the United States, who was es-
corted by the Chicago socialist, Thomas J. Morgan. Morgan and
Hardie found Debs, minus his suit coat, wea.ringa colored sum-
mer shirt and comfortably lounging in the yard of the jail. For
the entire day, the three men talked about socialism and the
need for an intematic;mal organization to stimulate friendship
among the workers. At the day's end. Morgan drafted a plan,
based upon their conversation, for the International Bureau of
Correspondence and Agitation. The object of the organization
was "to bring into harmonious relations all organizations and
persons favourable to the establishment of the Industrial Com-
monwealth founded upon collective ownership of the means of
production and distribution." They all signed the document,
but Debs was still not convinced; three months later he refused
to permit Morgan to publicize iL
Debs could not learn much in jail; he could only learn by ac-
tively taking part in the battles of the outside world When that
form of activity was denied him, his entire method of educating
himself came to pieces, and it was useless to give him books or
to argue with him. From his conversation with Keir Hardie,
Debs did not remember anything about Hardie's intellectual
force, but a simple incident about Hardie's sentimentality,
Debs wrote about it: "An advance agent of the locust brigade
had been captured and was singing his lay in a bottle in which
he had been placed Hardie quietly disappeared and in a few
minutes returned with a perforated cigar box, prepared with
his penknife and half filled with grass, and carefully transferred
the locust to his more comfortable quarters. . . I conclude
that a man who had solicitude about the comfort of an insect
could be safely trusted not to wantonly injure his fellow men."
Debs, in his new rOle as .guide for the American conScience,
contributed an article each week to the Chicago Evening Prea8
and freely granted interviews on every subject. To the Texas
convention of the People's Party he sent a letter: "While I am
committed unequivocally to 'free silver,' I regard the political
shibboleth as of little consequence compared to that other battle
cry, 'Free men' . " That was well enough, but his sincere and
florid expression on some subjects looked rather strange in
print. W1;ten asked to write for the Cleveland Plain-DealeT
about "The New Woman, the Bicycle and Bloomers," Debs
favored all three: "For myself, I confess to a liking for bloomers.
They seem cool and comfortable and there is something about
THE A MERICAN RAIL WA Y UNION 1711
the air of the girl who wears them that reminds me of the Dec-
laration of Independence."
Fortunately for Debs' reputation, he was soon able to set his
hand to other activity. As the date for his release drew near, he
learned that'a huge reception in Chicago was being ~ r r n g e d by
Lloyd, Trumbull, Florence Kelley, and the left-wing unionists.
An effort was made to persuade the Chicago Trades & Labor
Assembly to sponsor the reception, but it was objected that
Debs no longer believed in trade unions as a solution for the
workers' problems. Thomas J. Elderkfu. the president of the
trades assembly, was rash' enough to write Debs for his views
on the labor question. Elderkin's letter was written on Oc-
tober 30. The next day Debs wrote a lengthy, furious reply:
... For twenty-nine years I have been defining my "posi-
tion" in relation to trade unions, and on all proper occasions
I have given full, free and unequivocal expressIOn to my views,
but I must respectfully decline to do so for a consideration, even
though this consideration be in the form of a reception upon my
release from a jail in which I have served a sentence of six
months for my fealty to the principles of the very trade unions
which. now propose to interrogate me as to my "position" in re-
lation to their interests.
The statement that I am or ever have been hostile to trade
unions and that I am advocating or intend to advocate their
"abolishment" is too palpably false and malicious to merit an
instant's attention. There is, of course, a purpose in having this
question raised at this tiIne, but it is difficult for me to believe
that it emanates from a trade and labor assembly. If it had its
origin in the General Managers' association or some kindred
body it would be in consonance with the fitness of things and I
should readily understand it. . . . .
The trades assembly decided that it would be wise to sponsor
the reception, and did so.
[ 2 1
THE STREETS AND LA. 'WNS of Woodstock were blanketed by eight
inches of snow on November 22, 1895, the day that Debs was re-
leased from jail. A special train from Chicago was scheduled to
arrive in the early afternoon; it would immediately carry the
labor leader back to the Lake city for the giant reception. Dur-
ing the morning nebs was eager and nervous, preparing for his
departure. Theodore Debs, who had come from Terre Haute,
borrowed a horse and cutter, and Kate and Eugene Debs spent
hours visiting the townspeople who had opened their homes in
generous hospitality. Kate had firmly established herself in the
small community, due in large part to the friendly press notices
that she received. When she first arrived in Woodstock, the
Chicago Chronicle had printed -a very warm description of the
strike leader's wife: 'She is a large, splendid looking woman,
one of dignified manner and yet with a charming air which at-
tracts.a stranger at once. She has unbounded faith in her famous
husband and thinks that he will be a notable figure in the future
history of the country. As might be expected, Mrs. Debs is well
read on the subjects in which her husband is so vitally interested
and can hold her own remarkably well in a talk on economics.
u
Debs, having finished his round of visits, returned to the jail,
where he packed his books in heavy boxes, put his clothes into
suitcases, and donned a new black suit. The other inmates,
none of whom had known him six months earlier, mourned Debs'
release; four of them drew up a resolution which described their
"heartfelt thanks and gratitude for the many acts of kindness
and sympathy" which he had done for them. Sheriff Eckert
genially discharged, with his own best wishes, the famous
prisoner. Woodstock was already jammed with ten thousand
persons when the special train. be.aring a delegation of trade
unionists, arrived from Chicago. When the passengers saw
Debs, they "wept and cheered and laughed and cried as they
stood there in the snow. They fell upon their hero and kissed
him in the sight of thousands."
The jubilant throng continued to maul and pummel their idol
all the way to Chicago, where a more hysterical scene was en-
acted by the hundred-thousand people who crowded the station
and the surrounding streets. When the train stopped in the city
of his great defeat and triumph. Debs stood ~ the rear plat-
form and waved to the crowd. The shouts of the throng beat like
waves against the walls of the building. Men screamed and
yelled and beat upon their neighbors; coats were ripped, noses
bloodied, and nobody noticed or cared. Here before them was
Eugene Debs, who had led his legions into battle against the
massed power of the railroads. the newspapers, the Federal
courts, and the United States Army, rather than tum his feet
aside from the paths of conscience. That was what they thought,
and they idolized him for it. Finally several admirers swung
Debs to then. shoulders and tried to leave the station, but they
had not moved ten paces when the crowd closed in front of
them. Twenty minutes were lost before the police and sweating
unionists could force a slight break in the hWJlB.ll barricade.
Inch by inch, Debs' bearers fought their way through the mob,
and the long swaying column moved toward 'Battery D Armory
on Michigan Avenue. They tried to put Debs in a wagon, but
he chose to march through the slush and rain with his fellows.
"n the rest walk/' he protested, "I shall walk, too. What is
good enough for them is also good enough for me."
The Armory was filled to the walls with standing men and
women. Messenger boys, arriving with congratulations for
Debs, were passed over the heads of the audience so they could
personally deliver the telegrams. The wild excitement continued
while Henry Demarest Lloyd and Governor Davis H. Waite
welcomed the guest of honor and fiercely attacked the use of the
injunction, but the hall became silent when Debs moved to the
front of the stage. His bitterness, stored through one hundred
and eighty days of jail, flowed into a fiery demand ~ t the
conspiracy trial be reopened so that he could clear his name.
In a caustic attack on "usurped and unconstitutional power,"
Debs declared that Judge Woods' contempt of court verdict
was a threat to the freedom of every citizen. Americans were
indeed fortunate "if when night lets down her sable curtains,
they are out of prison, though still the wage-slaves of a plutOc-
racy which, were it in the celestial city, would wreck every
avenue leading up to the throne of the infinite by stealing the
gold with which they are paved, and debauch heaven's supreme
court to obtain a decision that the command 'thou shalt not
steal' is unconstitutional." Liberty is never won or kept except
through struggle, warned Debs; if men want to reclaim their
country from the money power, they must recognize the enemy
and fight back. The ballot is the best weapon known to man-
kind: "It can give to our civilization its crowning glory, the co-
operative commonwealth," but men must use it wisely or it
will bring them bondage instead of freedom. And when the
main speaker left the hall, men roseto sing: "We'll hang Judge
Woods to a sour apple tree, As we go marching on."
Debs had intended to return directly to Terre Haute, but he
was forced to stop in Indianapolis to visit a doctor; he had
shaken hands so many times that his wrist was twice its normal.
size and his entire arm was sO badly wrenched that he could
scarcely move it. There were also more serious problems. The
ARU was on the skids, a fact that Debs had never admitted.
In the autumn of 1894, he had told the New York World: ''The
union is booming." In March of 1895, while on an organizing
tour in the West, he wrote to George Schilling: "We are having
great success with our meetings and the trip will doubtless be
fruitful of great good to our cause." These reports were greatly
exaggerated; the meetings were immense, but the ARU did not
grow. Men went to hear Debs' lectures, but they were afraid
to join his union. On railroad after railroad the AR U members
were blacklisted, driven from their jobs, hounded from city to
city. until some of them finally became hoboes. Some. anony-
mous vagabond wrote a song about his new vocation. complete
with the jargon of his old:
Been on the hummer since ninety-fou1' '
Last job I had was on the Lake Shore'
Lost my office in the A.R.U. '
And I won't get it back until nineteen-two
Aryl. ~ still on the hog trainftagging my meals,
RUtn the brake beama close to the wheels.
Debs himself had hinted at the truth in his contribution. to a
Chicago Tribune symposium on the question: "What would
you do if you had two' hundred fifty million dollars?" Debs
answered: "1 would seek to provide employment for every mem-
ber of the American Railway Union blacklisted by railroad
corporations, and for all other idle workingmen."
The most pressing question was the union's debt of thirty
thousand dollars for legal fees to its attorneys, and printing
bills to the Terre Haute firm of Moore & Langen. One morning
soon after his release" from Woodstock, Debs strolled into the
office of Thaddeus Moore and wordlessly flopped into a chair
and tossed a piece of paper across the desk. When Moore glanced
at it, he saw that it was a deed to Debs' home, the dream house
on Eighth Street. Debs explained that it was meant as partial
payment on the ARU debt. When Moore complained that the
union leader had no personal liability, Debs insisted that the
deed be locked into the Moore & Langen safe, so that it could be
filed whenever his honesty was in question. He then wrote to
the union's other creditors, taking full responsibility for all
debts, and left on a lecture tour to raise the money and to re-
build the organization. At every step he was followed by rail-
road detectives, who watched his movements and attended all
of his lectures. Any railroader who was:caught at a Debs' meet-
ing was fired. Debs continued to speak before large audiences,
but there were noticeably few ra.ilroaders present. The ARD
men had not turned against their leader, but they were eager
to keep their jobs during the depression.
Debs worked out several shrewd techniques for beating the
railroad&. When it became obvious that any 1mown ARU man
would be fired, Debs asked all recruits to the union to mail their
cards directly to Terre Haute; the membership would be kept
secret until a system was completely organized. The plan was
clever, but it did not work very well. Debs had only his wits; the
railroads had men, money, jobs to hand out. The detectives
also were alert. In Providence, Rhode ISland, Debs held a meet-
ing in his hotel room at midnight, the men entering the hotel
one at a time from different directions. The next morning every
one of them was fired. In North Decatur, Alabama, Debs
secretly signed up a hundred and eleven men, not one of them
knowing the name of any other. The company called in the
eighteen leaders, read the names of the entire hundred and
eleven, fired the eighteen, and gave the others ten days to leave
the union. At Williams, Arizona, two thugs tried to break into
Debs' hotel room, springing the bolt so badly that the lock had
ISO THE BENDING CROSS
to be removed before he could open the door. His landlady, who
hated the detectives, told Debs, "Watch out for the scoundrels
or they'll get you yet." They had already gotten him. He was
working on a hopeless job. When Christma:.s came, he was
stranded in Des Moines without a dime. For the fust time he
had failed to spend the holidays with his parents.
The Brotherhoods as well as the railroads were intent on
smashing the ARU. The Enginee'T's' Jau:nwl attacked Debs so
violently that he offered to debate the issues in
P. M. Arthur's home town, with any leader from the Engineers.
The Cleveland Central Labor Union agreed to sponsor the meet-
ing, but Arthur would not accept. The Locomotive Firfmten's
Magazine said of the ARU leaders: " .. henceforth the official
publications will not hesitate to show to the worJd their vil-
lainy, treachery and dishontesty of purpose." According to
Richard Olney, Chief S. E. Wilkinson of the Trainmen boasted
that he had shaved off his beard and carried a rifle with the
militia during the Pullman boycott. The Trainmen had lost
at least nine thousand members during 1894, many of whom
were expelled for their support of the boycott. Equivalent
figures were true of the other Brotherhoods. The Brotherhood
leaders hoped that, if they helped to wreck the ARU, they would
wipe out a rival and also prove their own :reliability to the cor-
porations.
In spite of Debs' failure to revive the ARU, his personal
prestige continued to grow. When he was speaking in a livery
stable in Duluth, a man in the audience said something in a
loud voice. Debs, not understanding the comment, asked the
man to repeat it. The man did so: "I said you're all right." And
some giant a few feet from the first speaker muttered, "By God,
you'd better." In San Francisco, a little fireman in Debs' escort
was horrified to find a spectator in the front row who was still
wearing his hat. The fireman screamed in an outraged voice:
"Take your hat off, you.--. Don't you know that Gene Debs
is here." Later that evening, a switchman saw two detectives
who had followed Debs into a hotel lobby, and hurled them out
into the street. Debs could not possibly back down as long as he
had such support. His speeches became more and more radical,
TB E A ME RI CAN RAIL WAY UN IO N 181
until finally he was declaring that the wage system must be
abolished. But he still would not permit Tommy Morgan to
publish the agreement they had signed in Woodstock Jail.
The ARU leader spent May, 1896, in the South, June in the
East, July in the West and Northwest, August in the Southwest,
lecturing and organizing. From each city he sent checks to the
AR U creditors. When he arrived in Los Angeles, General H. G.
Otis' Times stated that Debs had come to stir up a new civil
war. Debs replied by renting a hall which would seat five thou-
sand persons, and flooding the city with handbills about the
meeting. The hall was so crowded for the speech that Debs was
forced to stand on a table to make himself heard. About the
middle of the evening, he learned that General Otis and an
antilabor judge were in the audience, and he immediately shifted
his attack to them: "Judge Ross is just part of the rolling stock
of the Southern Pacific. Look at his linen and you'll find it's
marked S. P.' "The audience massed closely around Ross and
Otis, so that they were unable to escape hearing the speaker:
If in whatI now have to say I do not prove Otis a monumental
liar, I'll give any charitable institution in California one thou-
sand dollars," followed by a specific list of falsehoods printed
in the Times.
Not even this flamboyant gesture could help Debs' cause. The
judges and the publishers and the railroads had won. The ARU
was a corpse, killed by one strike and the Federal government.
[ 3 ]
FEW EVENTS in American history have been so filled with mean-
ing as the Pullman boycott and its attendant circumstances.
The American Railway Union was destroyed, but its spectacu-
lar success publicized and proved the virtues of industrial
unionism. Injunctions had been previously issued in labor dis-
putes, but the court order of 1894 dramatically placed this
practice before the great body of citizens. State and Federal
governments had previously intervened in the struggles of the
workingmen, but never with such disastrous consequences or ob-
vious partisanship. Many outraged workers were convinced that
18!l
THE BENDING CROSS
they must control the government, or the government would con-
trol them. If they could not win major strikes, they must establish
a society in which strikes would not occur. Many men now ac-
cepted, and Jack London later expressed, the view that there
are two conditions when strikes do not happen: When capital
absolutely owns labor, and when labor absolutely owns capital.
Feeling that they were subject to the first, certain rebels chose
to work toward the second.
From that day forward, the labor injunction; industrial union-
ism, and social reorganization became practical issues in the
United States. With these demands as the touchstone, vast
realignments occurred in both the labor movement and the
political field The most determined fighters had been driven
off the railroads, and the Brotherhoods, which had suffered
heavily during the depression, entered into a solemn marriage
with the corporations. Samuel Gompers, re-elected president of
the AFL in 1895, was thoroughly alarmed by the outcome of
the strikes at Homestead, Coeur d'Alene, Buffalo, and Pullman.
Gompers thought that economic action was unwise because the
power of the state would be used against the workingmen, and
that political action was unwise because it split the trade unions.
Only one course was left open; The AFL followed the Brother-
hoods into a conciliatory policy toward the employers. It be-
gan as a matter of tactics and ended as an unquestioned prin-
ciple. The Federation, putting behind its radical days, began a
long retreat in which it sacrificed both unskilled workers and
consumers to win meager gains for its own members.
A great body of workers, refusing to accept this solution, con-
tinued the campaign for industrial unions and entered the Peo-
ple's Party. The minds of these native-born Americans were
trending steadily toward the left. They felt that the corpora-
tions, who were their sworn enemies, controlled the Federal
government. The result was a great social unrest, a gigantic
nervousness in which men were casting about for a philosophy
and a leader. For some of them the philosophy proved to be
socialism.
In 1896, the only Marxist party in America was the Socialist
Labor Party, dominated by the beliefs and personality of Daniel
THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION 18S
DeLeon. DeLeon was honest; he was fearless; he was educated;
but he was also arrogant and dogmatic. His uncompromising
dictatorship caused one split after another in his party. The
Socialist Labor Party had become a narrow sect, a religion
which followed the Messiah DeLeon. Most of its members were
foreign-born, who were divided by language differences from
the great body of workers. When the German socialists refused
on principle to learn English, this difference was made per-
manent. In 1895 the SLP isolation was accentuated by its own
action; it called the radical workers out of the AFL and founded
the Socialist Trades & Labor Alliance.
It was hopeless to expect any considerable number of Ameri-
can workers to join the SLP; but they would join a new Marxist
party which avoided the mistakes of its predecessor, a party that
was not superimposed from without but that emerged directly
from the labor battles of the decade. Such a party could only
be founded by a man recognized by the workingmen as a
brother. Eugene Debs proved to be the man. He inspired a
confidence and a devotion unequal1ed by any labor leader in
the country. Already he had been shrouded in an aura of legend
When Debs spoke at Cooper ,Union in the autumn of 1894, there
was in the audience John Swinton, sometime editorial director
of the New York Sun and then the most prominent labor
journalist in the United States. Swinton, as he listened to Debs,
was reminded of another gaunt man from the West who had
stood on the same platform in 1860: "Debs in Cooper Union
reminded me of Lincoln there. As Lincoln, of Illinois, became
an efficient agent for freedom, so, perchance might Debs, of
Indiana, become in the impending conflict for the liberation of
labor. Let us never forget Lincoln's great words, 'Liberty before
property; the man before the dollar.'''
Part III.
American Socialism
The workers' flag is deepest red;
It shrouded ott our martyroo dead.
But ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their life-blood died its every fold.
So raise our scarlet banner high;
Beneath its folds we'll live and die.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
-FlWM AN OLD SOCIALIST SONG.
CHAPTER 10
[ 1 1
T
HE POLITICAL REVOLT which had been growing
for three decades reached its climax in 1896. From ll-
Jinois to the Rocky Mountains, the prairies were aflame
with discontent. The farmers were heeding the advice of that
fiery Populist orator, Mrs. Mary Ellen Lease, to "raise less
com and more hell." The prices of farm products were lower than
they had been since the Civil War, while drought and locusts
had caused a succession of bad crop years. Urban workers
likewise were suffering deeply. Total money wages were less
than in 1892, and wage rates had fallen in 'most industries.
Although the work week ranged from fifty-four to sixty-three
hours, earnings in manufacturing averaged only $406 a year.
Special significance attached to the Democratic national con-
vention, which met in Chicago in early July. For two years,
John Peter Altgeld had been maneuvering an intra-party re-
volt against the policies of Grover The insurgents
had rallied round the slogan of Free Silver, but Altgeld's aims
ran far deeper than monetary reform. Free Silver, as Debs had
said in his letter to the Texas Populists, was less important
than free men. Debs, Altgeld, and hundreds of their colleagues
wanted to deal a smashing hammer blow against corporation
control of the government; and Grover Cleveland had become a
political symbol for Wall Street. Altgeld, with consummate
artistry. welded the various threads of revolt into an explicit
condemnation of the Administration. For the first time in
American history. a President was read out of his own party.
The Democratic platform. bearing the unmistakable stamp of
Altgeld's beliefs, declared for free silver, reduced tariffs, and
strict control of monopolies. In a final, conclusive repudiation
of President Cleveland. the platform denounced "government
by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppres-
187
sion." The President of the United States had lost his party to
an ugly little "anarchist" from Dlinois.
Although Altgeld had dictated the platform, he was unable to
dictate the Presidential candidate. Ineligible because of his
foreign birth, Altgeld tried to win the nomination for Senator
Richard Bland of Missouri, a lifelong advocate of silver coin-
age. But a young ex-Congressman from Nebraska, William
Jennings Bryan, with a rich, beautiful voice and a true orator's
stance, upset the plans. Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech voiced
in unforgettable prose the inchoate thoughts of the delegates.
When Bryan finished, the revolting workers and farmers went
crazy with enthusiasm. They marched in snake dances about
the hall, threw their hats high in the air, pummeled each other
and screamed: "Bryan, Bryan, Cross of Gold." The Boy Orator
of the Platte had just won a chance at the nation's top office.
And John Peter Altgeld, realizing that he had lost, turned "his
weary face and quizzical smile" to Clarence Darrow and said:
"It takes more than speeches to win real victories. Applause
lasts but a little while. The road to justice is not a path of
glory; it is stony and long and lonely, filled with pain and mar-
tyrdom. I have been thinking over Bryan's speech. What did
he say, anyhow?"
Eugene Debs, who had been on the Pacific Coast duriIig the
Democratic convention, was enjoying a brief rest in Terre Haute
when the Populists met in St. Louis two weeks later. The Peo-
ple's Party was faced by a clear choice: it could name its own
candidates and conduct an emphatic campaign against the
trusts, or it could endorse Bryan and concentrate on the silver
issue. Henry Demarest Lloyd had determined on the first, and
he had chosen Debs as the Presidential nominee. Two years
earlier. Lloyd had written to a friend: "My own preference for a
ticket would be Coxey and Debs. Those are the two men who
have done something, and have made the record that proves
them indomitable and incorruptible." Victor Berger, the Mil-
waukee socialist who had visited Debs at Woodstock, also
helped to line up convention votes for the ARU leader. And
among the delegates at St. Louis, according to Henry Lloyd,
were several "blacklisted members of the American Railway
A MERICAN SOCIALISM 189
Union," who had come "in the hope that they might have the
opportunity to make their leader, Eugene V. Debs, a candidate
for President." On the first day of the convention, an informal
poll showed that a majority of the delegations of twenty-two
states favored Debs, including the entire delegations from Ohio.
Indiana, Illinois, Texas, Georgia, and Missouri. Lloyd, recog-
nizing that his choice had a wide lead, wired to Debs in Terre
Haute. He received an immediate reply: "Shall try my best to
be with you tomorrow."
In 1894, and again in 1896, Debs had been mentioned as a
possible Populist nominee for governor of Indiana. Feeling
that acceptance would expose him to the charge that his labor
activities had been directed toward election to office, Debs had
refused. As early as April 26, 1896, Debs had been asked if he
would accept the Populist designation for President. His reply
had been unequivocal: "Well, I don't want the nomination. I
have absolutely no political ambition whatever and most as-
suredly I should not accept the nomination even if it were ten-
dered to me." But Eugene Debs, as he was to demonstrate re-
peatedly in the future, was usually subject to a draft. With
complete sincerity, he considered himself the servant of the
workers. If they wanted him to run, he usually ran. But in 1896
there was another consideration. Debs' mind was unsettled; his
thinking was changing rapidly on basic questions of philosophy
and strategy. He hesitated to identify himself completely with
a capitalist reform party like the Populists.
On the second day of the convention, word came to Debs
that he was still leading the field, and could probably have the
nomination if he wanted it. The Ohio delegates at the convention
were chanting:
One, two, three,
Who are we?
We're for Debs, Eugene VI
Perhaps if Debs had been at the convention, this fervor would
have swept him.into the race. But in Terre Haute, he was guided
by scruples rather than emotion. He thought it through, he
talked it over with Kate. and then he decided: "Please do not
permit use of my name for nomination. E. V. Debs!' When
Henry Demarest Lloyd read this telegram to the convention,
the radical element collapsed. Left without a candidate, they
simply floundered in the dark. Lloyd later wrote that his fac-
tion might still have won a majority if they had vigorously
projected a program "demanding, for instance, the public owner-
ship of all monopolies." But they did not. The convention made
its own nomination for Vice-President, but it endorsed Bryan
for fiesident and accepted silver coinage as the dominant is-
sue in the campaign. In one swift.stroke, the People's Party cut
its own throat. .
Debs now began to base his lectures on the Presidential
election. Although he had refused the nomination, he worked
wholeheartedly to insure success for the People's Party. An
article in the Railway Tim.eaafter the St. Louis convention
hopefully declared: ''let it be understood that the Populist
party has not surrendered its autonomy. and that its organiza-
tion must not only be maintained but strengthened at every
point." Debs and L W. Rogers vigorously condemned the AFL
admonition to keep politics out of the trade unions, but, as the
campaign progressed . they made a vital concession on the silver
issue. In September, the Railway Ti11l8 claiined that the mil-
roads were trying to center the battle on the currency question
in order to divert attention from the real focus, government by
injunction. Soon after that, however, Debs declared that the
demand for free silver "afforded common ground upon which
the common people Could unite against the trusts."
For the remainder of the campaign, Debs wavered between
these two positions. On October !t he deserted his lecture tours
and began to devote all his time to the election. George Schilling
urged him to appear in Illinois, where Altgeld was having a bit-
ter fight for re-election and Clarence Darrow was l'1mning for
So Debs gave twenty speeches in Chicago, drawing
thousands of people to every audience. While golden-voiced
Bryan was haranguing huge crowds of farmers on the silver
question. Debs was talking industrial unionism to equally
large crowds of workers. Illinois became the center of the battle
as the greatest Republican orators appeared to blast Altgeld-
Carl Schurz, Chauncey Depew, Theodore Roosevelt, Albert J.
AMERICAN SOCIALISM 191 ..
Beveridge, and Debs' intimate friend Robert G. IngersolL
Theodore Roosevelt, who had yearned to lead his Dakota cow-
hands into battle against the Chicago rioters in 1886, offered an
equally neat solution ten years later: "The sentiment now ani-
mating a large proportion of our people can only be suppressed
by taking ten or a dozen of their leaders out, standing
them against a wall and shooting them dead. I believe it will
come to that."
If the election had been held in September, Bryan might have
won; but sentiment shifted to the Republicans in the final weeks
of the campaign. Bumper crops in the West deflated much of the
agrarian discontent. The failure of the wheat crop in India.
opened a new marketfor American grain. The Republicans, hav-
ing capitalized on the fear of revolution to bleed a huge slush
fund out of the industrialists. now poured an endless supply of
money into the battle. Representatives of the banks toured the
rural districts, threatening to foreclose all mortgages if Bryan
were elected. Several railroads forced their employees to join
Sound Money Clubs. Factories posted large signs which told the
workers that the plant would close if the Democrats won. Try-
ing to fight back against this mighty tide, Debs again began to
preach free silver as "the only solution to the problems now
staring us in the face, as to how to open the mills and factories
to the workingmen."
The effort was hopeless. Corruption, threats, and good luck
brought a Republican landslide, making William McKinley
the new President and Mark Hanna the new ruler. Bryan did
not win a single state from Maine to Minnesota. He lost Cali-
fomia and North Dakota; even Kentucky went to the Repub-
licans. John Peter Altgeld, the foremost symbol for opposition
to the trusts, lost the governorship of Illinois. Clarence parrow
lost his race for Congress in an overwhelmingly Democratic
district. The election was a complete, utter defeat.
[ f2 ]
IF BRYAN had been elected President in 1896, Eugene Debs
might never have become a socialist. Always moving under the
impact of events, Debs never deserted a possible solution until
19i THE BENDING CROSS
. he became convinced that it had failed. His childhood acquaint-
ance with Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Thomas Paine, and Danicl
Debs had taught him devotion to the cause of the common
people. Every step he had taken was iD. obedience to this cause,
but his education was dilatory and painful. In the labor move-
ment he. saw the workers' desire for higher wages conflict
sharply with the employers' desire for higher profits. In the
Indiana legislature he learned that economic and political power
inevitably merge, that those who control the nation's industries
will control the nation's g()vernment.
Finally concluding that the railroad workers needed a single
organization, Debs helped to form the American Railway Union,
only to see it destroyed by corporate power and government
intervention. This was a crucial defeat for Debs. Cleveland's
action seemed to prove that the government was not an im-
partial referee, towering austerely above the conflict, but was
rather an active participant in the battle between the workers
and the employers. As Debs himself wrote about the Pullman
boycott: <'I was to be baptized in Socialism in the roar of con-
flict . . . in the gleam of every bayonet and the flash of every
rifle the class struggle was revealed . . . This was my first
practical struggle in 8<>cialism ... "
Before July, 1894, Eugene Debs gave little attention to the
Marxist philosophy. His creed reached as far as industrial'
unionism and no farther. But while in Woodstock Jail, he in-
tensified his study of social problems and discussed socialism
with Tommy Morgan, Keir Hardie, and Victor Berger. Debs
still hesitated to declare war on the capitalist system; like most
men, he would not adopt the revolutionary solution so long as
reform seemed possible. In 1896 he campaigned for the Demo-
cratic-Populist fusion and Bryan. The steam-ro1ler tactics of
Mark Hanna showed Debs that he had underestimated the
power of the corporations. Big Business not only had a firm
grip on the government; it also had a firm grip on the American
mind. The reform movement had run into a stone wall, which
. could not be scaled or breached, and could' only be destroyed
by means of a persistent, long-run battle to convert the compton
people to socialism. Resolving to take up this task, Debs pub-
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
198
lished his personal manifesto in the Railway Times on January 1,
1897:
The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism
because 1 am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign
of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis of
civilization. The time has come to regenerate sOCIety-we are
on the eve 'of a universal change.
Debs had moved slowly and backtracked often before decid-
ing on this step. In September, 1895, he had signed a statement
favoring "collective ownership of the means of production and
distribution"; six months later he refused to allow Thomas J.
Morgan to publish the statement. During the summer of i896
he signed the call for the convention which founded the Brother-
hood of the Co-operative Commonwealth; he did not attend
the convention and he refused to be one of the officers. This or-
ganization intended to found a co--operative colony in some
Western state, not a very-radical program. But Debs was hesi-
.tant. On December 12, 1896, he wrote an equivocal letter to
Henry Demarest Lloyd: "1 desire to see you soon after the
New Year to advise with you in regard to the situation and the
outlook and plans for the future. I have a matter of importance
upon which I would like to have your views." Contrary to his
intentions, Debs was forced to publish the "matter of impor-
tance" without seeing .lloyd, because another responsibility
in tervened.
A few days before Christmas there appeared in Terre Haute
the president of the Western Federation of Miners .. Ed Boyce,
who had been through the 1892 Coeur d'Alene strike, was taIl,
slender, bald, with good features and protruding teeth. He,
like Debs, had been a pioneer in the campaign for industrial
unions. His union was now in the seventh week of a strike at
Leadville and Cripple Creek, Colorado. Strikebreakers had
been sworn into the state militia and furnished with arms. Faced
with this situation, Boyce had attended the AFL convention
in Cincinnati to appeal for moral and financial help. The AFL
bad endorsed the strike, but it had no money. So Boyce stopped
in Terre Haute to ask Debs for assistance. While Debs might
~
THE BENDING CROSS
be reluctant to announce his belief in socialism, he had never
failed to support an honest strike. He consented at once to go
to Colorado, but he wanted to spend Christmas with his parents.
Daniel, who had retired from his business in 1894, was seventy;'
six years old and nearly blind; Daisy was sixty-eight. Eugene
Debs insisted that he must be in Terre Haute for the holidays,
and it was agreed ilia t he would get to Leadville as soon as pos-
sible.
When Debs arrived in the Colorado mining town, he was met
at the station by a gang of thugs, who warned him not to give
any speeches in the area. Debs answered calmly: ''This will
either be the beginning of organized labor in Colorado or the
end of me." His meeting that night was one of the most success-
ful he had ever held.
All of Colorado was in a state of hysteria. The Coronado
mine in Leadville had just been attacked by the Qnion miners.
and many men had been killed and wounded on e ~ h side. The
prevalent opinion held that all union organizers were murderers
and anarchists. and this opinion covered Debs. One day as he
stood in the street near his hotel, a companion pointed out a
huge man standing a few feet away. This giant, according to
the unionist, had been following Debs for days. Debs at once
walked over to the suspected strikebreaker and asked why he
was being followed. The big man gruffiy replied that he was
from Vincennes, Indiana, and knew that Debs was "on the
level with the workmen"; so he had decided that anybody who
touched his idol "would be carted out of this here region a
corpse." Heartened by such support, Debs stayed in the strike
zone mOre than two months. He gave dozens of speeches to
encourage the miners. He tried to .persuade the owners to agree
to arbitration. But his work was futile. The strikers finally re-
turned to work on the owners' terms.
Although Debs again refused the post of organizer for the
Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealth because of
his duties to the ARU, he constantly defended the colonization
plan. Daniel DeLeon's newspaper. The People, ridiculed coloni-
zation as "a mirage of false hopes" and "a thorny desert of
utopianism." Victor Berger had already mentioned the pos-
AMERICAN SOCIALISM 196
sibility of "somewhat 'hazy' reformers pledging themselves to
some sort of 'fad.' .. Henry Demarest Lloyd, feeling that coloni-
zation could not succeed, had refused to become chairman of
the organization. But these criticisms did not ,sway Debs, who
emphasized that colonization was "the most popular feature
of the plan. especially with the unemployed." Debs proposed io
organize a mass migration to some Western state. where c0-
operative colonies would be formed. The radical immigrants
would then nominate candidates for all state offices and cap-
ture the state goverilment, thus providing a solid base from
which the movement could spread in all directions. The plan
was indeed, as Marx and Engels had said :fifty years earlier.
an attempt to establish "a pocket edition of the New Jeru-
salem." ,
The remaining skeleton of the American Railway Union met
in Chicago on June 15, 1897. Just three years earlier, there had
been more than four hundred enthusiastic delegates at the ARU
convention. Now there were barely two dozen, most of them
national officers. Realizing that the ARU had no immediate
future as an industrial union, the convention voted to dissolve
the old order and to found the Social Democracy 'of America.
Debs, in his keynote speech, expressed the dominant view:
''There is no hope for the toiling masses of my countrymen ex-
cept by the pathways mapped out by the Socialists, the ad-
vocates of the co-operative commonwealth." The new party's
emphasis was on the colonization plan, but it also adopted a
political platform: public ownership of all monopolies and
utilities, a shorter work day, public works for the unemployed.
Every member of the party's executive board had been in Wood-
siock Jail; Debs was named chairman, James Hogan vice-
chairman, Keliher secretary-treasurer, William Burns and R. ~
Goodwin as organizers. The initiation fee was set at twenty-
f i v ~ cents and monthly dues at fifteen cents, including a sub-
scription to the Social Democrat, as the Railway Timu was now
called. '
The actions, of the ARU convention brought forth a new storm
of criticism by both radicals and conservatives. The People
caustically spoke against the colonization scheme, while the
196
THE BENDING CROSS
Detroit Free Pt688 cominented: "the most obvious . intent of the
new movement is the glorification of Debs." Isaac Hourwich,
a Socialist attorney in New York, ironically said: "People can-
not be kept enthusiastic in 44 states over the prospect of es-
tablishing a model commonwealth in the 45th on easy monthly
payments." Henry Demarest Lloyd, in his reply to Hourwich.
emphasized another weakness: "When I saw that all the offices,
and power--and revenue-of the new body had been gobbled
up by the 'old guard' of the A.R.U. I rejoiced that I was not
involved in an organization which at the very inception wrecked
itself by 'pure and simple' selfishness. Debs tried to prevent it-
the merest instinct of self-preservation dictated that he should
do so--but his hungry followers--poor fellows, they have suf-
fered greatly-rould not be restrained." Debs tried to defend
the Social Democracy by describing colonization as "an in-
cidental plan to relieve the present distress all about us as
much as possible." In his first few speeches in Milwaukee apd
Chicago, he emphasized this viewpoint. Then his organizing
tour'was suddenly interrupted.
A bituminous coal strike had begim July 4 in West Virginia,
and injunctions had been issued to prohibit the miners from
holding public meetings on the highways. President M. D.
Ratchford of the United Mine Workers summoned Debs to the
strike zone, and Debs willingly went. The miners' leaders, Debs,
J. R. Sovereign, and Samuel Gompers met in Wheeling on
July 27 to consider the injunctions. They decided to ignore the
court orders and continue the strike. For the next month Debs
and the others toured the entire area, Uying everywhere to rally
the miners. Although the injunctions were never invoked,
another circUlIlBtance removed Debs from the conflict. He suf-
fered a severe sunstroke from speaking bareheaded on a hot
day, and was forced to return to Terre Haute. The sunstroke
caused persistent headaches, but when 'a group of labor lead-
ers met in St. Louis two weeks later to consider the coal strike,
Debs was among them. Once again he overtaxed his strength
and went back to his sick bed. Finally word came to Terre
Haute that the strike had been won. The coal companies signed
a contract to cover the entire central competitive field, and an
AMERICAN SOCIA.LISM 197
arbitration board awarded the miners a pay increase. Debs re-
joiced in the victory, since it was the first major contract ever
signed by the coal operators.
As soon as he had recovered slightly, Eugene Debs returned
to the lecture platform and his organizing trips. He spoke for
branches of the Young Men's Christian Association, for Chau-
tauqua societies, for local trade unions and state federations of
labor. Although he occasionally had trouble with the local au-
thorities, usually he was warmly greeted. When he arrived in
Topeka, Kansas, early itt 1898, he was received at the State-
house by the Governor and the Supreme Court judges. All of
these officials sat on the speakers' platform to hear Debs praise
socialism. A reporter present at the meeting wrote: "In all
that vast audience, there was not a man who, when Debs had
ceased speaking, would not of helped hang to 'a sour apple tree'
any federal judge who had proposed to harm the leader of the
A.R.U. strike." -And a year later, Debs discussed the prison
problem before the exclusive Nineteenth Century Club of
New York City. Here, for the first time, Debs presented his
theories about the cause of depressions. Business panics, he
said, were due to the low wages of labor, which did not enable
the workers to buy back the goods which they produced. Dur-
ing the resultant unemployment, men were driven to crime in
order to support their families: "Industry has not been im-
poverished by prison labor, but prison labor is the .result of
impoverished industry." How, asked Debs, could any person
support a society which forced men to steal?
When the Social Democracy was first founded, such leaders
as James Hogan, Roy Goodwin, and William Bums had bit-
terly disapproved any mention of political action. They had
wanted to concentrate on the colonization plan, and only Debs'
personal influence had saved the political demands in the plat-
form. By the second convention of the Social Democracy in
June, 1898, a deep split existed around this question. Any at-
tempt to continue the colonization plan was opposed by Victor
Berger, Isaac Hourwich, G. A. Hoehn, and other ex-members of
the Socialist Labor Party who had joined the Social Democracy.
Debs, who had .seen a year's campaign raise only twenty-five
hundred dollars, was forced to agree that colonization was not
feasible. A vindictive fight took place in. the convention, with
Debsplaying a very inactive part. He had no interest in the
sort of technical warfare. however principled, that marked the
argument. Sylvester Keliher had refused to issue charters to
eight new chapters in Chicago, on the grounds that the colo-
nizers were trying to pack the convention. The national execu-
tive board ordered Keliher to issue the charters, and delegates
from these new lodges were duly seated. Mter that the issue
was settled, but the fight continued. James Hogan accused
Keliher of misappropriating the funds of- the colonization com-
mission and using them to meet the general expenses of the or-
ganization. Charges and countercharges were exchanged for
hours, with an occasional speech about the virtues or defects of
colonization.
Debs watched in despair while his brother officers from the
ARU endlessly reviled each other. He even went to lunch with
Ennna Goldman, the unofficial leader of the colonizers. This
young, heavy, rather ugly philosophical anarchist, who had
never joined the organization but now appeared as a key figure
in its convention, found Debs "genial and charming as a human
being." Debs expressed views which Emma Goldman found very
much like her own. Finally she exclaimed, "Why, Mr. Debs,
you're an 8.IlB.l"clUst!" Debs then clasped her hand and said,
"Not Mister, but Comrade; won't you call me that?"
"1 stressed the fact that political action is the death-knell of
the economic struggle," Emma Goldman wrote. "Debs did not
dispute me, agreeing that the revolutionary spirit must be kept
alive notwithstanding any political objects, but he thought the
latter a necessary and practical means of reaching the masses."
When the issue of colonization versus political action came to
a vote, Eugene Debs was not present. He had been again
stricken by a maddening headache, and was forced to remain in
bed in his hotel room. The vote resulted in a clear victory for
the utopians, 5!! to 37, so Berger and Keliher at once led the
political action group from the convention. The bolting dele-
gates held their own meeting in a neighboring hall, and de-
cided to found the Social Democratic Party. The new Party,
basing itself firmly on political methods, declared that it was "a
dass-conscious, revolutionary, social organization." A leader of
the colonizers promptly replied: "Standing for all men, we con-
demn the class-conscious propaganda as a delusion and a snare,
as being not only ineffective but totally untrue."
With no hesitation, Debs announced his support of the Social
Democratic Party, thus reaffirming his belief in the existence of
a class struggle in America. The battle between workers and
employers had turned Debs against that society which caused
so much misery and pain for his fellows. He did not intend to
retreat now. When he was elected. together with Victor Berger.
Frederic Heath, Seymour Stedman, and Jesse Cox, to the Social
Democrats' executive board. Debs resigned a11 claim to the
fifteen hundred do11ars owed him by the colonizers. But he had
no regrets. In an open letter to his colleagues. Debs declared:
The separation at the late convention was inevitable. It had to
come. The contemplation of division was painful, as those can
fully realize who were party to it. But painful as it was, the
operation had to be performed. And it was a success, for the
Social Democratic a r ~ of America lives. All its members are
full fledged Socialists. They are in accord with the program of
International.Socialism. There is not one in the nUmber opposed
to independent political action; not one that asks or expects
anything from any old capitalistic party. by whatever name it
may be called.
On October 1. 1898. the Social Democrats opened their first
national office in the Old Opera House on Washington Street in
Chicago. Theodore Debs, the Party's treasurer. moved to
Chicago with his wife Gertrude, a Denver girl whom he had
married in 1894. There were fewer than fifteen Social Democrats
in the city. and at one time the Party's treasury held only two
dollars. Theodore was often forced to appeal to Seymour Sted-
man or Jesse Cox. both local lawyers and members of the execu-
tive committee, for ten dollars to pay the monthly rent on the
one-room office. If Stedman and Cox were unable to furnish the
money, Theodore pawned his watch, a transaction that he
customarily performed at a certain pa wnship. Whenever the
proprietor saw Theodore's face in the doorway, he automatically
wo
THE BENDING CROSS
said to his cashier, "Give the Socialist gentleman forty dollars."
Gertrude Debs later remarked: "If Theodore had thrown that
watch out of the window on Sixty-sixth street, it would have
found its way straight to the hockshop in the Loop."
Meanwhile, Eugene Debs was again touting the country,
talking about socialism and selling subscriptions to the Social
Democ1'(uic Herald, which reached six thousand people week1y
in the autumn of 1898. In addition to the Herald, Victor Ber-
ger's Milwaukee Vorwaerts, the Jewish Daily Forward in New
York City, and Ju1ius Wayland's Appeal to Reason, all supported
the Social Democrats. The most colorful and successful of these
organs was the Appeal. Julius Wayland, a native of rural
Indiana, had accumulated a modest fortune in job printing and
real estate speculation at Pueblo, Colorado. Just before the
panic of 1893, he sold his printing business, turned his real es-
tate into cash, and returned to Greensburg, Indiana, where he
established a weekly newspaper, the Coming NaJ,ion. Wayland
had already lost his old Republican views and become interested
in the socialism of Edward Bellamy, Wi1liam Morris, and John
Ruskin; So he established a socia1ist colony at Ruskin, Tennes-
see, and moved his newspaper there, but soon he became dis-
gusted with the wrangling and :fled to Kansas City, Missouri.
On August 30, 1895 ',Wayland published the first number of
the Appeal to Reason. This socialist paper suffered heavily dur-
ing the Bryan craze of 1896, and it was temporarily suspended;
but Wayland made a fresh start in the small town of Girard in
southeastern Kansas. This time he succeeded. Except for brief
periods during the Spanish-American War and after McKinley's
assassination in 1901, the circulation of the Appeal rose steadily.
By 1899 it could boast a hundred thousand readers, and the
paper moved into a new building in Girard, a long, narrow, one-
story brick structure which resembled a prison.
Wayland, eminently a product of the moralistic, prohibition-
ist Bible Belt of the Midwest, spoke to his friends and neighbors
in words they both understood and believed. Wherever Eugene
Debs went, he found the farmers and workingmen delighted by
the epigrams and rambling anecdotes of the four-page weekly.
From Xenia, Ohio, June 6, 1899, he wrote a letter to Wayland
about the Appeal: "Its friendly face appears everywhere. It is
literally honey-combing capitalism. Wherever the Appeal is at
work, and that seems everywhere, socialism has at least a nu
cleus and the light is spreading .... More power to the Ap.
peal."
[ 3 ]
THE CLOSING YEARS of the century witJ].essed the development of
a greater maturity and consistency in Debs' views. Throughout
his life he believed his statement of 1897: "I make no attack
upon the rich man. I do not deal with individu'lJs. I realize that
to a very large extent he is the product of his surroundings."
But Debs never repeated his naive error of June 19, 1897, when
he asked John D. Rockefeller to help finance the colonization
plan. "The purpose of the organization, briefly speaking," Debs
wrote to Rockefeller, "is to establish in place of the present
cruel, immoral and decadent system, a co-operative common-
wealth, where millionaires and beggars .. will completely
disappear, and human brotherhood will be inaugurated to bless
and make the world more beautiful . In this movement
there are no class distinctions: Rich and poor are equally wel-
come to help dethrone. Gold and elevate humanity. Then the
strong will help the weak, the weak willlov'e the strong, and the
Human Brotherhood will transform the days to come into a
virtual Paradise . Believing that you will find yourself
in accord with your own feelings of social and patriotic obliga-
tions by your generous contributions to a worthy cause for
freedom, I remain sincerely yours, Eugene V. Debs." If Debs
had intended this letter as dramatic irony, it might have been
called a stroke of genius, but he was completely sincere.
Rockefeller did not bother to reply, and Debs' illusions soon
disappeared. He came to realize that, while wealthy individuals
might support his cause, the responsibility for liberating the
common people must rest with the common people. Only the
workingmen had the. power and determiilation to establish
socialism. This conversion to the theory of class struggle soon
led Debs to oppose all alliances with the capitalist parties. In
THE BENDING CROSS
February, 1899, when the Union Reform party was being or-
ganized, Debs was invited to participate in its convention. He
emphatically declined: ''being a Socialist . . and being pro-
foundly impressed with the conviction that only through Social-
ism is there relief from the ills of capitalism, I am not in favor
of such a party as is proposed, which, in the nature of things,
must be founded in compromise and cannot long survive the
internal dissensions which swept its predeceSsors from the field
and are bound to overwhelm and destroy the new party. It is
either Socia.liam or capitalism-complete freedom or total
slavery. I am a Socialist without a shadow of concession or
compromise."
Not even Debs' personal feelings could in1luence his political
course. Although Daniel DeLeon had repeatedly charged that
Debs was receiving free passes from the railroads, Debs advised
his followers in New York City to support the Socialist Labor
Party in the 1897 election, since the SLP was "the only anti-
capitalistic party in the field."
Debs' adherence to socialism was stabilized by the belief that
he was following in the path of the early American radicals. He
justified his own views by pointing to Thomas Paine, Patrick
Henry, John Brown, and the Haymarket martyrs. His scrap-
book soon contained leaves which he had gathered at the grave
of Thomas Paine in New Rochelle, New York, and at the home
of John Greenleaf Whittier in Amesbury, Ma.ssa.chusetts. At
the founding convention of the Social Democratic Party, he
helped to draft a resolution in which the convention paid "trib-
ute to the memory of Edward y first to popularize the
ideas of Socialism among his countrymen and last to be for-
gotten by them." With these ra.dical predecessors Debs shared
a common creed, a belief that human history means change,
that man must go forward or he will surely go backward. And
by 1900, Eugene Debs had arrived at the outlines of the pro-
gram to which he devoted the next twenty-five years: industrial
unionism, a revolutionary socialist party, and stern opposition
to the capitalist system.
The outbreak of the Spanish-American War oflered a clear
test of Debs' political views. By 1890, the American frontier
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
had practically disappeared as a field for investment and settle-
ment. The large corporations sought raw materials and new
markets in the Caribbean and the Pacific. When this program
of expansion indirectly resulted in war with Spain, Debs pub-
licly proclaimed:
There are thousands who are not swept from their feet by the
war craze. They realize that war is national murder, that the
poor furnish the victims and that whatever the outcome may
be, the effect is always the same upon the toiling class ..
In 1894 the press denounced us for the alleged reason that we
were murderous and bloodthirsty, and now the same press op-
poses us because we are not.
We are opposed to war, but if it ever becomes necessary for
us to enlist in the murderous business, it will be to wipe out
capitalism, the common enemy of the oppressed and down-
trOdden of all nations.
And when the American Army began its campaign to conquer
the Philippines, Debs told an audience of trade unionists in
Indianapolis: "We are making a market over there in the Orient
for the products of half-paid labor in this country; making the
market by the force of arms and at the expense of the lives of a
people whose only offense has been their love of freedom and
self-control."
Those were Debs' views in 1898. When he said exactly the
same thing twenty years later, he was Sent to prison.
CHAPTER II
[ 1 ]
E
UGENE DEBS, when he deserted pure and simple trade
unionism for a place in the socialist movement, found
himself alienated from many of his former associates.
For a dozen years lie and Samuel Gompers had worked toward
the same goal; this co-operation was now permanently dis-
rupted. The leaders of the railroad Brotherhoods, in the years to
come, did not try to conceal their hostility 'for the socialist
champion. Even Debs' erstwhile colleagues in the American
Railway Union broke with their old chief; George Howard
moved steadily into the Gompers' camp; Hogan. Goodwin. and
Burns remained with the short-lived colonization plan. Sylvester
Keliher and L. W. Rogers joined the Social Democratic Party,
with Rogers resigning his post as head of t ~ Michigan Feder-
ation of Labor to manage Debs' lecture tours, but both of them
soon dropped out of sight.
Even among Debs' relatives, his apostasy had considerable
effect. His oldest sister Marie and her husband John Heinl, one
of the prospering businessmen of Terre Haute, had never sym-
pathized with Debs' activities in the labor movement. Another
sister, Emma Debs Maillaux, was married to an electrical en-
gineer of increasing wealth and conservative views. Several
members of Kate Debs' family were already well on the road to
becoming millionaires. These people, who were comfortable
under capitalism, had no desire to see it changed. The Heinls,
the Maillauxs, and Kate's family had for Eugene Debs an
affectionate but questioning attitude. They felt that his senti-
mental nature was causing him to sacrifice a promising career
in business or politics. He had an undoubted ability to make
money and they wondered why he refused to do so.
This viewpoint was shared to some extent by Kate Debs. She
was not certain that her husband should devote his life to the
204
AMERICAN SOCIALISM !l05
ra.dical movemen4 where'the sacrifices were so real and the re-
wards so nebulous. New York socialists spread a rumor that
Kate had fainted when Eugene Debs first announced his con-
version to socialism, but this rumor did not gain much currency
in Terre Haute. Kate Debs was not the fainting type. Even
those acquaintances who disliked her, who claimed that she
was frigid, prim, ambitious, and stingy, all credited her with
courage and devotion.
In 1922 Eugene Debs wrote a brief article on the topic: "How
My Wife Has Helped Me": "She shared what came in stormy
days' without complaint, and when I returned after many weeks
of weary travel she had the home sweet and cozy and minis-
tered to me in all tenderness until I was rested and refreshed
for another journey. . . . For years she was our secretary of
state. She wrote all my letters in long hand before the days of
the type-writer, and I had a large correspondence. She trudged
through the snow to a cold office when I was out on the road,
lighted the fire, emptied the ashes, cleaned the office, answered
themail.shipped bundles of literature to me and to others, and
then returned to cook her meals, set the house in order, and
attend to the wants of the home."
Exaggeration of the change in Debs' personal affairs after he
became a socialist would be easy. His parents and his brother
Theodore all clung with unyielding fidelity to the new banner he
raised. Arthur Baur, Kate's half-brother, served for years as un-
official banker to Eugene Debs, who had extended his boycott of
Pullman cars to include all banks. His habit was to stroll into
Arthur Baur's drugstore on Wabash street, drop a huge sheaf
of bills on the counter and ask: "Say, Art, will you keep this for
me?" Perhaps on his next visit to Terre Haute, Debs would ask
Baur to give him a thousand dollars. If Debs' account did not
hold that much money, the druggist merely drew it from his
own and handed it over. This arrangement continued for more
than two decades. Debs seldom knew how much money he had;
sometimes he was thousands of dollars in debt to Arthur Baur,
but Baur never mentioned that fact. To Debs the plan had
several virtues. It was no longer necessary for him to sully him-
self by entering a bank. He could always get any amount of
THE BENDING CROSS
cash he wanted, and Kate never knew how much he had. Kate
was not stingy, but she sometimes objected to the openhanded
generosity of her husband. On one occasion-but unknown to
Kate-Debs got three hundred dollars from Arthur Baur, gave
it all away within a half hour. and then went back to the drug-
gist for more.
Debs continued on intimate terms with several men who were
nonpolitical, or even anti-socialist. Robert Ingersoll had been
a leading Republican for more thim twenty years, and had
campaigned against Bryan and Atlgeld in 1896. But when In-
gersoll died in 1899, the Socialist leader filled fifty-five pages of
his scrapbook with clippings about his old friend. He always
remembered the morning that he had been in ID.gersoll's office
in New York. The office was filled with people who had come
to ask for loans or favors of ~ o m kind. Ingersoll, with tears in
his eyes, had said to Debs: "1 can hardly come to my t>ffice any
more; I can't help them all and I haven't the heart to turn them
away." Debs still had great affection for James Whitcomb Riley,
and his friends in Terre Haute included several wealthy mer-
chants-Ben Cox. Carl Stahl, Anton Hulman, Riley and Frank
McKeen-but far more important was his meeting with an-
other socialist, Stephen Reynolds.
Stephen Marion Reynolds and his gorgeous wife Jessica were
considered rather peculiar by Terre Haute's respectable citizens.
Jessica was descended from the McKinney family, which had
been prominent in the early days of the Standard Oil Corpora-
tion, and Reynolds had come to Terre Haute in 1890 to promote
several oil wells. When the wells failed to prosper, he returned
to his original profession, the law. Although Jessie and Steve
were recognized as eccentric intellectuals, their wealth gave
them, at first, considerable standing in local society. They
bought a large house at 1115 South Sixth Street, in one of the
exclusive blocks in town, remodeled it and painted the exterior
a bright red. Reynolds, however, did penance for this ba.rbarism
by vigorously campaigning for sound money and William Mc-
Kinley in 1896.
Beginning with the Pullman boycott, there was a subtle
change in Reynolds' views. He heard dozens of stories about
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Eugene Debs, although they had never met, and his deep
scholarship inevitably carried him into the socialist literature.
Reynolds had long been in revolt against the society he knew.
not because of its poverty and suffering, but because of its
narrowness, its ignorance, its concentration on pro6.t-making.
In socialism he found an explanation and a solution for the
things he hated. Jessie and Steve Reynolds fought their way
through one radical book after another, reading them aloud,
discussing them fully. Jessie progressed by means of intuition,
Steve by means of logic, but they arrived at the same destina-
tion. In 1900 they joined the Social Democratic Party.
In many ways, Steve Reynolds was the exact antithesis of
Eugene Debs. Debs, while he was determined to overthrow the
basis of capitalism, accepted without question many of its inci-
dental features. He always tended to underestimate theory, and
concentrated his attention completely on practical activity. He
lived in a conventional house, married a conventional local girl.
and was known as one of the most sober and immaculate dress-
ers in town. With Steve Reynolds it was different. Reynolds'
de6.ance was leveled at the manifestations of capitalism. A tall.
lean man with an ugly face, a leonine nose, and a deep scar near
his eyes, he wore rumpled clothes, used profanity freely, and
thumbed his nose at all critics. When he began to wear open-
throated shirts and sandals while riding his bicycle around Terre
Haute, the local legal profession was agog at the afIront to its
dignity. Jessie too, with her bright red hair tied in a small knot
behind her neck, wore sandals and low-necked Grecian gowns
while other women were wearing high, tight collars, many petti-
coats, and rigid o r s e t s ~ Exceedingly dynamic, she was always
talking, often in a loud voice, usually about important topics.
Largely cut off now from their former associates, the heretics
found welcome companionship in Eugene Debs. And Debs joy-
fully returned their affection. He found constant delight in their
three children, Jean, Ford, and Marian, who helped to 6.11 a void
in his life. He found at the Red House a broad grasp of culture
which he had never acquired. He never did acquire it. because
he always accepted work that seemed more important, but he
liked to brush against the versatile mind of Steve Reynolds.
Perhaps most important, he found two people who shared his
faith in socialism. with whom he could talk: freely, fully, and
passionately. Most aspects of Debs' personality found their
outlet on the lecture platform. The others were shared with his
wife Kate, his brother Theodore, and with Jessica and Stephen
Reynolds.
[ f ]
THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY scored several local successes
early in life. Although it received only twelve thousand votes in
the election of 1898, these votes were concentrated in Massa-
chusetts, so that two socialists were sent to the state legislature
and a third was elected mayor of Haverhill Independent s0-
cialist organizations in Iowa and Texas merged with the Social
Democrats. When the new party opened its first national con-
vention in Indianapolis, March 6, 1900, it had 4536 members.
with 226 branches in twenty-five states. Debs playe<;l an im-
portant role in this expansion. In 1898, he had given dozens of
speeches to striking textile workers around Fall River, Massa.
chusetts, and just before the election he spoke to twenty-seven
hundred people in HaverhiJI. The' folJowing May, while on a
lecture tour of the South, he had negotiated the merger with the
Socialist Party of Texas.
The Social Democrats also benefited from the dogmatism of
Daniel DeLeon; a large faction of the SociaJist Labor Party, r ~
volting against DeLeon's standards of purity, set up independ-
ent headquarters in Rochester, New York. The leaders of these
"Kangaroos," Morris Hillquit, Max Hayes, and Job IIarriman,
appeared at the Social Democratic convention in 1900 and pro-
posed co-operation in the coming election. The Social e m ~
cratic chiefs did not regard this offer as an unmixed' blessing;
anybody so recently associated with Daniel DeLeon was con
sidered tainted. The Rochester spokesmen explained that they
had nominated Harriman, a California lawyer, and Hayes, a
Cleveland printer and editor, as their Presidential slate, but
they offered to withdraw Harriman if they could name the Vice-
Presidential calldidate on a jQint ticket. They then quietly began
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
lining up votes to win the convention's endorsement for both
Harriman and Hayes, and had won over a majority of the dele-
gates before the convention chiefs got wind of the move. The
session was hastily recessed, and the Social Democratic leaders
converged on Debs' room in the Occidental Hotel. They told
Debs bluntly that he had to accept the Presidential nomination.
He refused. The previous autumn he had publicly announced
that he was not a candidate for public office; how would it look
if he changed his mind? For several hours Debs clung to his
position. He argued and pleaded, sat on the bed and then
bounced up to pace around the small room. Finally his col-
leagues told him that he alone could save the Party from the
DeLeonite scalawags, and Debs reluctantly agreed to run. The
following day he received the nomination.
Debs' hesitation was based on sound prophecy. Any labor
leader who runs for political office is subject to the charge of
insincerity. Debs was an easy target for this charge, since his
spontaneous affection and French traditions led him publicly to
kiss adults as well as babies. But the slightest acquaintance with
the socialist leader left most men completely charmed by his
affability. When he returned from the Indianapolis convention
to Terre Haute, a large crowd was waiting at the station to
celebrate his return. Many of them were friends and neighbors;
a few were socialists like Stephen Reynolds; others were skeptics
eager to see the Presidential nominee act like a pompous fool
Debs appeared on' the rear platform as the train slowed to a
halt. He took off his hat, waved it to the crowd, smiled and
shouted his thanks. Then he startled the onlookers by' vaulting
the railing and dashing across the platform to embrace a Negro
porter whom he had not seen for years: "Why bless my heart.
Bob; it's good to see you!"
Three weeks after the Indianapolis convention, the Kangaroos
and the Social Democrats held a joint gathering in New York
City to complete the merge:r:.and work out a common electoral
program. The sole disputed point was a name for the new party;
the Rochester group preferred to call it the United Socialist
Party while the Social Democrats wanted to keep their former
name. It was finally agreed that the question would be sub-
mitted to a referendum of both parties. The rank and file
thought that unity had been effected, but nothing of the sort
had happened. In April, the national executive board of Debs'
party issued a vicious denunciation of Harriman, Hayes, and
Hillquit. Charging that these men had promised at Indianapo--
lis to accept the name of the Social Party, Debs and
his colleagues righteously declared: "A united Socialist Party
cannot be built upon broken pledges."
This factionalism lasted throughout the summer. Debs warned
that acceptance of the referendum results, which were unfavor-
able to his viewpoint, would result in the "swallowing up of the
Social Democratic Party." Victor Berger referred to Morris
Hillquit as "a thoroughly class conscious lawyer of New York"
and called Job Harriman "a Tammany politican of the seven-
teenth degree." Hillquit answered with the charge that "the
publication of the manifesto was the most puerile and
mischievous act any set of officers of a socialist party could make.
themselves guilty ot"
There was considerable evidence to support Hillquit's state..,.
ment. The real issue .was not the name of the organization, but
the distrust that Debs and his associates felt for any former
friend of Daniel DeLeon. Victor Berger, now so busy attacking
the Rochester leaders, had suggested a few months earlier that
the Social Democrats should support the nominees of the
Socialist Labor Party. Debs, when he heard about Berger's pro-
posal, wrote an explosive letter to Fred Heath, another member
of the Social Democratic executive board: ''There are hundreds
of perfectly straight 'Kangaroo' Socialists who will be disgusted
and enraged by one of our leading papers supporting DeLeon.
Nor do I agree with you that it would hurt the socialist move-
ment to vote against such a black-hearted scoundrel as DeLeon.
. . I also disagree with you when you say you have nothing
against DeLeon Have we nothing against the arch-enemies
of the socialist movement? .Are you unconcerned about the
slimy slander to your colleagues & yourself in this ojJicid ca-
pacity? I ha'lJe something against DeLeon and every other
enemy of my party.. ."
In the public discussion, Debs was considerably less candid;
AMERICAN SOCIALISM ~ l
and Victor Berger hastily forgot his former heresy. For months
not a sensible word on the point at issue appeared in the press
of either faction, but the fact of a common Presidential ticket
worked strongly for unity. The socialists found widespread
misunderstanding about their program, misunderstanding care-
fully promoted by the major newspapers. Debs was forced to
explain that his party did not propose public ownership of white
shirts or toothbrushes, but only of the capital goods of the
country-the factories, the railroads. the banks. The growth of
monopoly could never be checked by regulation. said the so-
cialists; outright confiscation was the only cure for the problem.
Throughout the campaign, Debs emphasized that his party
alone was loyal to the interests of the American people. He
flayed both the American attack on the Filipinos and the British
attack on the Boers, saying constantly that these wars would
benefit only the corporate interests. He attacked the two major
parties with complete impartiality; although the Republicans
represented big business and the Democrats small business, they
both represented the capitalist system, said Debs. Four years
earlier the Populists had committed suicide by fusion with the
Democrats, and now only the socialists could legitimately claim
to fight for the welfare of labor and the poor farmers: "It is
therefol;e a question, not of 'reform: the mask of fraud, but of
revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-
rule abolished. and wage-slavery supplanted by co-operative
industry."
The rival socialist factions, feeling that their common ticket
was making huge gains, began to lessen their abuse of each
other. The Social Demooratic Herald finally repented enough to
mention that Job Harriman was running for Vice-President.
But this optimism was premature. The commercial newspapers,
although they contradicted each other daily, united in their
opposition to the Social Democrats. The Chicago American, a
Democratic organ, gave currency to a rumor that the Republi-
cans were furnishing large sums of money for the socialist cam-
paign. A few days later, several Republican newspapers charged
that Debs ,intended to withdraw in favor of William Jennings
Bryan. Debs vigorously denounced this report: "It is a pure
THE BENDING CROSS
fabrication ofthe capitalistic press ... Iamin the fight to the
finish. All reports to the contrary are false and malicious." But
his denials were not given the nation-wide publicity of the orig-
inal charges. When the ballots were counted in November, Debs
had polled 96,878 votes.
Soon after the election, Stephen Reynolds was summoned to
his front door early one morning by a rather hesitant rapping.
When Reynolds answered the door, he was greatly surprised to
find Eugene Debs standing on the step. Debs was usually much
too considerate to call before the family had finished breakfast,
but on this occasion he seemed greatly disturbed. Accepting an
invitation to join the family at the table, Debs began a halting
account of a dream which had awakened him the previous
night. In this dream, he was walking through a swamp when he
saw a strange animal caught in the mire. The animal was strug-
gling frantically to free itseU, and Debs hurried to its aid He
tried for hours to extricate the beast, but his efforts were fruit-
less. Finally becoming convinced that a single man was inade-
quate for the job, he hurried to the nearby village and returned
with another humanitarian, Stephen Reynolds. The two men
toiled for the remainder of the day. Several times they had the
animal on the very edge of the bog, but each time the beast
made a false move and tumbled back. They even dragged brush
to the bog and built a ra.mp to solid ground and tried to haul
the animal up the ramp. But it persistently flopped back into
the mire. At the d a y ~ end, the animal was exactly where it
had been when Debs found it. Then Debs woke up.
This subconscious disillusionment was not shared by Debs'
colleagues. The other leaders of both the Social Democrats and
the Kangaroos were elated by the election results. Their joint
ticket had, after all, polled ninety-six thousand votes while
DeLeon's nominee received only thirty-four thousand When an-
other unity convention was held in Indianapolis the following
July, the previous split between the Rochester faction and
Debs' supporters was overshadowed by the emergence of a
division into left and right wings. The left wing insisted that no
important gains were possible until a socialist society had been
established. These impossibilists, as they were called, would
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
recognize only one demand-the unconditional abolition of
capitalism. After a furious debate on the platform, the vote was
eighty-two to thirty in favor of the inclusion of immediate de-
mands. However, the delegates voted to drop all demands for
farmers, because they did not consider farmers to be members of
the working class. Having agreed upon the platform, the con-
vention easily drew up a constitution, formed an executive
committee with Leon Greenbaum as national secretary, and
established national headquarters in St. Louis. The convention
also agreed to ca,U the new organization tht? Socialist Party, thus
ending the battle on that score. But the Social Democratic
faction, in order to protect itseU against domination by the
Kangaroos, insisted that each state organization should be
autonomous in most respects.
Eugene Debs took no part in this convention. He had no
stomach for intra-Party bickering, of which he had gotten his
fill at the 1900 gathering. Even more important, Debs had a
profound distrust of leaders and the principles of leadership. He
felt that platforms should be settled, not by a handful of dele-
gates, but by the great body of consumers in the political market
place. The unity of the Party might be desirable, Debs thought,
but it was not essential When he disagreed with the policies of
the organization, he made his own policies. Debs tried to con-
vert the rank and file of the Party and depended on the rank
and file to convert the leaders. In the next twenty-four years he
appeared at only one Socialist national convention.
[ 3 1
FROM the very beginning, the Socialist Party held conflicting,
and even contradictory, groups. Membership was open to any-
body who accepted, in the most general way, its principles, and
who recognized the existence of a class struggle in the United
States. These requirements were so vague that they covered a
multitude of basic Hundreds of Protestant min-
isters joined the Party in order to work for a truly religious
society. Professional men and women joined in order to express
their revolt against the narrowness and hypocrisy of American
THE BENDING CROSS
life. Small businessmen joined in order to strike a blow against
their larger competitors. Politicians joined in order to gain
public office. Labor leaders joined in order to win promotion in
their unions. .
All of these motives and theories exerted pressure on the
policies of t ~ Party. One faction offset another. Joint action by
the organization was blunted or even paralyzed. And the Party
was most divided on the precise question where unity was most
important, a long-range strategy in the trade unions. Eugene
Debs believed that, of all the groups in America, only the work-
ingmen had both the need and the strength to lead the battle
against capitalism. Since the trade unions carned on the daily
guerrilla warfare of the workers, they were the logical agency to
teach the connection between the short-run struggles and the
ultimate socialist goal. Samuel Gompers and his colleagues, far
from fulfilling this function, actually sabotaged the daily battles
by their defense of craft unionism. That was Debs' theory, but
it was not shared by the other leaders of the Socialist Party.
At the Social Democratic convention of March, 1900, this
question held the center of attention. James F. Carey, a member
of the Massachusetts legislature and a leader at the convention,
offered a resolution against "coercing" trade unions to support
the Party, since this would lose votes rather than win them. The
resolution was attacked by Victor Berger and Fred Heath, who
had succeeded in capturing the Central Labor Union of Mil-
waukee. For two days Eugene Debs remained in his chair, while
the discussion grew louder and more venomous. Finally Debs
declared that Carey's proposal was both ill-taken and unneces-
sary. His influence helped to table the resolution, but the nar-
row vote of 31 to ~ was ominous.
Debs' efforts to build a militant labor movement found strong
support in the Western Federation of Miners. The battles of
Coeur d'Alene; Telluride, Cripple Creek, and Leadville were
fought out with a ferocity unequalled in the East. On one side
were the employers, the state militiR', private armies, strike-
breakers, spies, court orders, damage suits, starvation. On the
other side stood the miners, armed with rifles and dynamite.
Between the two camps ran an unquestioned barrier. It was un-
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
necessary to tell the western miners that the class struggle was
a reality; they ridiculed any attempt to deny it. Many members
of the union and its leaders, President Ed Boyce and secretary-
treasurer Bill Haywood, joined the Socialist Party, and they
invited Debs to address their Denver convention in 1901.
Bill Haywood recognized his great debt to Eugene Debs.
Haywood, in the early spring of 1894. had been an unemployed
miner and ranch hand in Nevada, who crossed the Western
deserts with Kelly's army looking for work. The search was
fruitless, and Haywood had rejoined his family in Winnemucca
by the time of the Pu11man boycott. The dramatic events of
July, 1894, marked Haywood's introduction to trade unions:
"Here, I felt, wasa great power. It was not the fact that produce
had been removed from the cars and the strikers were that much
ahead. The big thing was that they could stop the trains." By
1900 Haywood was chosen secretary-treasurer of the WFM.
Although he was only thirty-one years old and had spent less
than five years in the mines, his lumbering frame and fighting
spirit had already made him a,n idol of the mining towns.
Great enthusiasm greeted Debs' speech to the WFM con-
vention; the delegates endorsed socialism and recommended
that all miners join the Socialist Party. But Bill Haywood bet-
ter remembered the night he and Debs got drunk at the Im-
perial Hotel. At a late hour Haywood and Thomas J. Hagerty,
with two quarts of whiskey, knocked on the door of Debs' room.
Debs, worn out from a long lecture trip, was already dressed
for bed, but he willingly agreed to the interruption. The con-
versation was disorganized, noisy, and joyous, ina way that was
shocking to the small family hotel. The three men discussed the
eight-hour day campaign of the miners, in which Debs had taken
an active interest for more than a decade. They discussed the
series of socialist lectures that Debs and Hagerty were to give
in the mining camps. But it proved difficult to stick to the point,
and soon they began swapping anecdotes about their experiences
in the labor movement.
Eugene Debs still found pleasure in the Negro dialect stories
with which he had filled The Magazine, but now they always had
a elass-conscious twist when he told them. Some "impertinent
iU6
THE BENDING CROSS
cad," according to Debs, once tried to force Alexander Dumas to
confess that his ancestors were Negroes. First he asked about
Dumas' father, then about his mother, finally ahi?ut his grand-
parents. Dumas finally replied: "My great grandparents were
probably monkeys, my a.ncestors beginning where yours left
off." And then Debs, without giving his audience a chance,
told about a member of Parliament who pushed his way through
a crowd with the cry: "Make way there! Don't you know that
I'm a representative of the people I" But he did not overawe a
coal-porter, who shouted back: "Hell, don't you know that we
are the people I"
It was a remarkable group. This was one of the few occasions
when Eugene Debs, who weighed a hundred eighty pounds and
stood six feet two, found himself the smallest man in the room.
Tom Hagerty, a former Catholic priest who had resigned to
become a socialist, weighed more than two hundred pounds.
Bill Haywood by any sta.ndards was a brawling giant. And each
of them had a voice to match his size. They drank the whiskey
and roared on while the hours passed, Hagerty pacing around
the room; Haywood sprawled in a chair, his head turne'd slightly
in an unconscious effort to conceal his blind eye; Debs sitting
squarely in the middle of the bed, a glass in one hand and a pipe
in his mouth, his legs crossed under i ~ bony ankles projecting
from his pajamas.
Debs and Haywood, at the time of their meeting in Denver in
May, 1901, were already aware that the National Civic Fed-
eration represented a grave threat to their plans. In 1898, a
group of business and professional leaders in Chicago had or-
ganized a Civic Federation for the purpose of holding confer-
ences about public issues, including the labor problem. This
federation investigated the Pullman strike and issued a report
generally favorable to the strikers. For the next half dozen
years it limited its activities to occasional conferences and pub-
licity for industrial peace, but in June, 1900, it changed its
name to the National Civic Federation and prepared to play
a more energetic role. The first major innovation was the es-
tablishment of an arbitration department, on which Samuel
Gompers, President John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers,
AMERICAN SOCIALISM

and President Dan J. Keefe of the longshoremen's union, all
agreed to serve. In the summer of 1900, a serious strike threat-
ened the anthracite coal fields. Senator Marcus Hanna of Ohio,
Cleveland industrialist, President-maker to William McKinley,
chairman of the Republican National Committee, feared that
the strike would harm the chances of his party in the November
elections. Therefore he persuaded the coal operators to sign a
one-year contract which allowed a 10 per cent wage increase.
The following year Hanna negotiated a one-year extension of
the contract, and in December, 1901, he became chairman of the
National Civic Federation.
The labor movement in 1900 had seemed to be prospering.
The unions then had eight hundred sixty-eight thousand mem-
bers; their enrollment had nearly doubled in four years. But
this of strength was deceitful, and Samuel Gompers
mew it. No trade union could hope to win a strike against a
major corporation, so Gompers thought it wise to continue the
policy of conciliation adopted six years earHer. The AFL be-
gan, first as a matter of tactics, then as a matter of principle,
to champion only the cause of skilled, white workers. Negroes
had been used as strikebreakers in the Chicago stockyards, in
the Western mining camps, in two towns in central lllinois; the
question of accepting them into AFL locals had become critical.
Since the ,Negroes were excluded from the unions, their only
chance for factory jobs came during strikes. But Gompers
urged organizing them into Jim Crow federal labor unions, and
his suggestion was written into the AFL constitution. The craft
unions also ignored the plight of the unskilled workers, making
no effort to organize the mass-production industries. Most
clothing factories, coal mines, and basic steel plants were free
from the resistance of organized labor.
Thus the trade unions and the big employers came to an im-
plicit agreement. The unions would make no effort to organize
the unskilled and Negro workers; the corporations would make
certain concessions to the trade unions. Many industrialists
refused to concede anything at all. During the anthracite strike
of President George F. Baer of the Philadelphia and Read-
ing Coal and Iron Company piously declared: "The rightS and
!t18 THE BENDING CROSS
interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for
. . by the Christian men. to whom God in his infinite wisdom
has given the control of the property interests of this country."
But the policy of conciliation was supported by John D. Rocke-
feller, August Belmont, J. Pierpont Morgan, C. M. Schwab of
United States Steel, Julius Kruttschnitt of the Southern Pacific,
Mark IIa.n.na, and other key figures in the financial world The
AFL, at its 1899 convention, had called upon the trade union-
ists of the United States. and workingmen generaUy, to study
the development of trusts and monopolies with a view to DaI-
tionalizing the same"; this resolution was quickly forgotten in
the atmosphere created by the National Civic Federation.
The radical labor leaders were determined to counterattack,
but they pondered carefully about the time and the method
They finally made their move at the convention, in May, 1902.
of the Western Labor Union. This rival federation to the AFL
had been founded by the Western Federation of Miners in 1898.
Gompers had tried to persuade the WFM to give up its plan
and return to the AFL. He had failed, but the AFL continued
its efforts to convert the metal miners; secretary-treasurer
Frank Morrison of the AFL came to Denver in 1902 to engineer
the dissolution of the Western Labor Union. Eugene Debs also
came, again as an invited speaker. It was so arranged that the
AFL chief spoke first. Morrison defended the policies of his
organization, and emphasized the need for unity in the labor
movement. He claimed that the miners, by their efforts to
organize dual unions, were harming the cause of labor; the ex-
istence of two unions in the same craft always resulted in chaos.
Then Debs launched a comprehensive attack on the craft
unions. When the AFL refused to organize Negroes and un-
skilled workers, when it refused to organize the mass-produc-
tion industries, when it clung to the outmoded forms of craft
unionism, it was guilty of promoting the same disunity which
it now tried to condemn. But Debs' main attack was leveled
against the National Civic Federation. Gompers and John
Mitchell, by pretending that the workingmen had friends among
the industrialists, were undermining the very basis of the labor
movement. If the employers were willing to grant wage increases
AMERICAN SOCIALISM ~ 9
and decent working conditions of their own free will, why were
trade unions needed at all? Debs called upon the delegates to
change their name to the American, Labor Union. declare in
favor of socialism, and begin a nation-wide campaign to or-
ganize industrial unions. Every one of these proposals was
adopted by the convention in an outburst of fervent enthusiasm.
Debs left Denver immediately to tour the entire Northwest in
the interests of the American Labor Union and the Socialist
Party.
This action by Debs and Haywood was severely rebuked by
several leaders of the Party, who considered it a serious tacti-
cal error. Many socialists had already gained influential posi-
tions in the AFL. Fred Heath and Victor Berger were in firm
control of the Central Labor Union of Milwaukee. Morris Hill-
quit had become attorney and adviser to several craft unions.
J. Mahlon Barnes was a powerful figure in Gompers' own cigar-
makers' union. The solid socialist base in the labor movement
was demonstrated at the 1902 convention of the AFL, when the
socialists introduced a resolution advising "the working people
to organize their economic and political power to secure for
labor the full equivalent of its toil and the overthrow of the
wage system." This resolution was narrowly defeated by a vote
of 7899 to 4171, and it received nearly uDa.nimous support from
the United Mine Workers, the carpenters, and the brewery
workers.
Within three months after the formation of the American
Labor Union. the wide split in the Party had become a public
battle. The Party's constitution provided for the establishment
of a Local Quorum in the city where national headquarters
were located; and, between meetings of the Executive Commit-
tee, this Local Quorum could make policy and issue statements
for the national orga.ni.Zation. A semiannual report by the St.
Louis Quorum in September, 1902, decried the autonomy of the
state districts. Although the Socialist Party had pledged itself
to the "unification of the trade unions," said the report, many
comrades in the West were acting as organizers for the American
Labor Union. By this action they were "misrepresenting the
attitude of our party and compromising it in their attempts to
iiO THE BENDING CROSS
build up a;rivallab01.' Qrganization to the American Federation
of Labor."
When this statement was published, Eugene Debs was furi-
ous. The report did not mention his name, but no great insigh t
was needed to see that it applied to Haywood and himself. Debs
wrote an immediate answer for publication in the International
Sociali8t Re17iew. already the organ of the Party's left wing.
Debs argued that Gompers had wilfully refused to support the
Leadville strike of 1896 and had constantly tried to destroy
the Western Federation of Miners, while the metal miners had
always supported their brothers in the East. The American
Labor Union had organized four thousand members in Sep-
tember alone, and its existence was spurring the AFL to un-
precedented organizing efforts. The Western miners had pub-
licly declared for socialism; why should the Socialists attack
them in favor of their conservative rivals? Debs answered his
own question by charging that certain socialist politicians
"were perhaps advised that it was wiser policy to curry favor
with numbers than to stand by principles." The metal miners
had "refused to be assimilated by Mark Hanna's Civic Federa-
tion," and Debs supported their refusal. He would be willing
to support Samuel Gompers also "when the American Federa-
tion of Labor sheds its outworn pure and simple policy, when it
declares against the capitalist system and for union, class-
conscious action at the ballot box; when it relegates leaders to
the rear who secure fat offices for themselves in reward for keep-
ing the rank and file in political ignorance and industrial slavery,
when it shall cease to rely upon cringing lobbying committees."
One misstatement of fact, and another serious disagreement,
occur in this declaration by Debs. Little reason existed for re-
ferring to "Mark Hanna's Civic Federation." The National
Civic Federation was a thriving national organization when
Hanna became connected with it. The Cleveland industrialist
served as president for less than eighteen months. Eugene Debs,
however, in his search for evil personified, chose to present the
Civic Federation as resulting from the diabolical tactics of one
man. Second, Samuel Gompers vigorously denied that he had
refused help to the Leadville strike of 1896. He even accused
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
221
Ed Boyce of the WFM of duplicity in attempting to wheedle
financia.l support for the strike, when the AFL had no money tor
its own purposes.
But Debs was not finished. He promptly carried his battle
into the Executive Committee of the Party, where he met bitter
opposition. The pedantic, domineering Berger declared that
De bs and Haywood were doing the Party immeasurable harm
in the trade unions. Debs roared back that Berger's beloved
trade. unions had been seduced by Mark Hanna and were now
unfit bedfellows for the socialists. The scholarly Hillquit tried
to effect a compromise, but soon he too was engaged in a vin-
dictive quarrel with Debs. Debs was vehement, accusatory, un-
yielding, and, in the end, he had his way. In January, 1908. the
Executive Committee removed Leon Greenbaum as national
secretary, replaced him with William Mailly, a young coal
miner, and moved the national headqua.rters from St. Louis to
Chicago.
The following autumn the socialists suffered an overwhelming
defeat at the AFL convention. Their resolutions were beaten
by a six to one margin, and their candidate for of the
Federation received only 1286 votes to 12,449 for Gompers.
Debs wisely refrained from any comment on these results, but
he probably did not rejoice in them. Although he criticized
those socialists who compromised their principles to gain votes,
he did not desert the men who continued to fight for socialist
control of the craft unions. He thought that eventually the
socialists in the American Labor Union and the socialists in the
AFL would be able to unite the two organizations around a
radical program.
Eugene Debs,-in this quarrel about trade union strategy, em-
phasized the critical importance of the labor newspapers. In
May, 1904, he wrote that the trade union journals should con-
sistently give a radical analysis of society:
The editor of a labor paper is of far more importance to the
union and the movement than the president or any other officer
of the union. He ought to be chosen with special reference to his
knowledge upon the laoor question and his fitness to advocate
and defend the economic interests of the class he represents.
THE BENDING CROSS
The union journals could never be true to this purpose if they
sought corporate advertising, said Debs, because such advertis-
ing could only be procured at the cost of editorial control. Al-
though many advertisements for the Westinghouse Corporation
and other companies had appeared in The Magazine when Debs
was editor, he now do not, as a rule, ad-
vertise in labor papers that are loyal to working class interests."
CHAPTER XII
ImJ
[ 1 ]
A
FTER the Pullman boycott of 1894, Debs' only income
came from his lecture fees and from his publishlng fum
in Terre Haute. The Debs Publishing Company was
never a profitable venture; all of the ingenuity of Kate and
Theodore. who alternated as manager, was needed to meet the
expenses. When Debs accepted the socialist philosophy, the
firm abandoned the field of railroad technology and became a
propaganda outlet for the new gospel. And Eugene Debs, who
had never understood the profit motive. usually gave away
more books than he sold. He wrote hundreds of letters each
month to friends and followers all over the country, and each
letter contained a printed copy of one of his speeches. a leaflet
containing Edward Bellamy's "Parable of the Water Tank," or
some other jibe at capitalist selfi..shness.
Debs would have managed his lecture tours with the same in-
difference to finances, but fortunately L. W. Rogers, his col-
league from the ARU, managed the tours in 1898, then a
Lyceum Bureau in Chicago for several years, and finally Theo-
dore and Kate from Terre Haute. The net income to Debs was
normally about a hundred dollars a week, and he was well satis-
fied even though he was offered five times as much to speak on
the Chautauqua circuit. Each week Debs gave seven speeches
of two hours length, rode more than a thousand miles in stifling,
filthy day coaches, slept in dirty country hotels, ate greasy food
and lumpy potatoes, seldom saw his wife and parents, had few
friends whom he met more than three or four times a "year, gave
up all of the usual comforts and luxuries of life. When Joseph A.
Labadie, a philosophical anarchist in Detroi t, inquired abou t the
lecture business in 1905, Debs wrote in reply: "I can hardly
find it in my heart to cheer you on. There is so much to contend
with and to overcome in the present condition of things that the
223
THE BENDING CROSS
undertaking is fraught with all that is calculated to make a man
think a second and a thh-d time before engaging in it. If you were
a quack revivalist, or sensationalist or fantastic humbug of some
sort, starting out to pander to the ignorance of the people, it
would be different."
Although Debs tried to discourage others from entering the
lecture field, he personally enjoyed the routine for several rea-
sons. He firmly believed in his message. He reveled in the honor
and prestige which were justly his. He found in oratory the
delight that any honest craftsman finds in his work Lastly, he
delighted in his contact with thousands of Americans, from the
unknown to the great and the near-great. About 1903 when he
spoke in Rochester, New York, a distinguished local citizen was
in the audience. Nearly twenty-five years had passed since the
first and only meeting of Eugene Debs and Susan B. Anthony.
On that occasion Miss Anthony had been on the platiorm; in
the audience was the callow, idealistic, twenty-three-year-old
youth.
Now Debs had reached maturity, and Miss Anthony had
passed her eightieth year. The orator instantly noticed that
"the years of trial, persecution and incessant struggle had left
their ruthless impress upon her noble features." Mter his speech
Debs hurried to her side. She clasped his hands in both of hers
and murmured: '<You remember me?" Debs was shocked.
"Remember you,',' he replied, "how could anyone ever forget
Susan B. Anthony?" The veteran crusader for woman suffrage
instantly pressed his hands and exclaimed: "How glad I am to
see you after all these years!"
The two agitators argued brielly about the relative impor-
tance of their aims. "Give us suffrage,''- Miss Anthony said
laughingly, "and we'll give you socialism." To which Debs
blithely replied: "Give us socialism and we'll give you suffrage."
Miss Anthony, her face seamed, her eyes watering, her body
infirm, was discouraged at the tedious progress of her life's
cause. Mter fifty years of sustained, effort, national suffrage
for women was still far from achievement. She found it particu-
larly painful to realize that she would die before victory had
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
crowned her banners. Not even the cheerful tenderness of the
Socialist leader could prevail against this pessimism ..
I 2 ]
WHENEVER EuGENE DEBS returned to Terre Haute, a large part
of the town soon knew it. The neighbors saw him swinging up
the alley from the railroad station, whistling loudly, and heard
him shout "Hello, Ducky" to Kate as soon as he entered his
block. The mailman noticed an interruption in the :flow of let-
ters which carried a crude picture of a duck and then the ad-
dress, 451 North Eighth street. Debs' nieces and nephews and
all of their friends learned that their patron saint was back in
town. Daniel, who owned the building that housed the Debs
Publishing Company, once more became accustomed to early
morning visits from his older son.
Debs eagerly looked forward to the end of a lecture tour, when
he could return to the comfort and regularity of home. During
his days at the office and his evenings at home, he was always
surrounded by friends and members of his family. Both Kate
and Theodore helped with his but in very differ-
en t ways. Letters written by Theodore sounded exactly as if
they had been written by Eugene; the two brothers looked alike,
thought alike, wrote alike, using a common attitude and a com-
mon vocabulary. When Kate was taking dictation, she was more
than a stenographer; she was also an editor. Debs would be
striding up and down in the office, completely lost in the thread
of his oratory, when suddenly Kate's voice would break in::
"That is perfect nonsense. That is stupid." And Debs, reading
over what he had just said, usually decided that she was right.
He recognized that Kate had a: restraint, a feeling for the literal
truth, that he lacked.
Kate's cool judgment made her a good critic. Although Debs
gave essentially the same few speeches for twenty years, he
never stopped trying to perfect them. He changed words, jug-
gled the rhythm of the sentences, carefully devised alternate
sections so that he could tailor every oration to fit the audience.
THE BENDING CROSS
Many of these changes originated on public platforms, but the
fluency of Debs' rhetoric depended in large measure on private
sessions in his upstairs study, where Kate listened for hours to
the high-pitched, mellow voice that poured through the open
windows and brought the neighbors onto their front porches.
Debs soon became aware that he was providing entertainment
for the entire block, and he often closed the program by play-
ing selections from ''Thais'' on his phonograph. Or, if the au-
dience paid a personal visit, he would gladly recite Edwin
Markham's "Man with the Hoe." When Debs first saw Mark-
ham's poem in some Eastern magazine, he became so excited
that he jumped from his chair. He immediately read it aloud to
Kate, and 'they both agreed; said Debs later, "that Markham
had given voice to the soul of the revolutionary cause and the
struggle for emancipation and human betterment."
This leisurely home-town life was enriched by frequent re-
quests for Debs' services, both as an orator and as a trade
unionist. Debs was rightfully regarded as the father of the Terre
Haute labor movement, since he had helped to organize most of
the local craft unions. He was always willing to help organize a'
factory or plan strategy for a strike. One afternoon a printer
from Mach-ille, about a mile beyond the Wabash River, stopped
at Debs' office to ask his aid in establishing a local union of coal
miners there. Debs readily agreed, and that evening he, the
printer, and two other men walked through deep, slushy mud
to Mackville, appeared at the meeting, and then trudged back
home. Debs made no complaint about the weather, but he
talked all the way to Terre Haute about the marvelous spirit
of the miners.
Debs' ventures into local affairs were sometimes less success-
ful. During a bitter streetcar strike, So delegation of strikers
came to him for advice when the company agreed to negotiate
the grievances. Knowing that the strikers were all inexperienced
in negotiations, he feared that they would be deceived by some
clever official from the company. So he advised them to draw up
in advance their list of demands, and then to "be firm" with the
company. The union committee, with Debs' help, drew up a
model contract and departed for the negotiating session.
AMERICAN SOCIALIS M
Twenty minutes later, tlley sheepishly re-entered Debs'
office. Startled that they had returned so quickly, Debs asked
them for an account of the meeting. Not one of them would say
a word about it. Growing impatient, he grabbed the most vocal
man from the committee, sat down behind his desk, and said
to the spokesman, "Now pretend that I'm the president of the
company and that you're just entering'my office. What did you
do?" The recruit to unionism hesitated a moment, then whipped
the model contract from his pocket, slammed it down on the
desk, and shouted, "We want you to sign this, and be Goddamn
quick about iU" The company president had promptly thrown
out. '
Debs threw his head back and laughed until the tears rolled
down his face. Although he regretted that he had not been more
specific in his advice, he often told that story as one of the most
amusing incidents in his career.
Debs normally spoke from the_public platform in Terre Haute
only during election campaigns, since he believed that no com-
munity wanted to hear him more than two or three times a year.
But he often agreed, at the request of Steve'Reynolds, to give
informal talks before small groups. Although Reynolds had
been largely ostracized from the business community after his
conversion to socialism, he found it no hardship. His real estate
furnished a comfortable income, and the decline of his law prac-
tice allowed him to set his hand to more congenial work. He
immediately organized a series of classes for the young people of
Terre Haute. This educational which was attended by
five hundred persons in eight years, greatly influenced the life
of the community. Reynolds taught countless young working-
men and fanners how to read and write. He gave a regular three-
month course which described the formation of the earth, the
beginnings of life, the origin of man, the evolution of society,
the contradictions of capitalism and the need for socialism.
Six or eight different groups, with pupils ranging from ten to
thirty years of age, were always studying this program. The
students were not well educated when they got their diplomas,
but they could all read and write, they knew the general out-
lines of history, and they would never forget that knowledge
THE BENDING CROSS
was a wonderful thing. Dozens 0 f them, guided by the memories
of long evenings in Reynolds' Red House, where the bookcases
hemmed in the parlor, had an enduring passion for research
and learning.
An informal group known as the Co-operative Dinner Club
also found its locale and inspiration in the parlor of the Red
House. The personnel of this Dinner Club, although it was con-
stantly smfting, was based upon the young professional men
of the immediate neighborhood and several other instructors
from Indiana State and Rose Polytechnic, the two local col-
leges. Anybody who was interested in new ideas was welcome
at the Sunday evening gatherings, where the discussions cov-
ered poetry, drama, socialism, the education of children, and
the current economic situation. Verbal exchanges were friendly
but emphatic; these were people who had their own notions and
knew how to talk about them. The conversation wandered
easily from the new drama of G. B. Shaw to the merits of mod-
em architecture and then onward to Meredith's novels. Rey-
nolds prompted a series of disputes about Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle; When several members who accepted its accuracy
were repelled by the brutality of the story, Reynolds bluntly
insisted that reality should be changed, not concealed or evaded.
but most of the members resisted his socialist views.
Steve Reynolds and the Co-operative Dinner Club were host
to dozens of guest lecturers who passed through Terre Haute.
Clarence Darrow explained his radical theories of law and
penology. Clarence White, a famous photographer, came to take
photographs of a family across the street, but when he discov-
ered the Reynoldses, he deserted his employer and spent sev-
eral weeks at the Red House. A man came to lecture about
Yogi, and made the entire group practice breathing exercises.
Another visitor presented a theory about changing the rotation
of the ea.rth by causing explosions at the North Pole. Horace
Traubel, a prominent disciple of Walt Whitman, helped to
launch a Whitman cult a t the Dinner Club. During a coal strike
in the adjacent mining area, Mother Jones was asked to explain
the cause of the strike, and the entire house was crowded by
A MERICAN SOCIALISM
"'dirty, vile-mouthed, tobacco-chewing coal miners," according
to one of the members. Anybody who had a new, vital idea. no
matter how good or how bad, was welcome at the Red House.
Kate and Eugene Debs were neither frequent nor conspicuous
guests at these meetings, but Debs was always grateful for a
chance to be present. When he was in Terre Haute, Jessie Rey-
nolds phoned the other members, always giving precisely the
same message: 'T ou must be certain to come Sunday. Mr. Debs
is coming over." Then the meeting acquired a special dignity,
since few of the members knew Debs well. Although Kate may
have been upset by informality. her husband certainly did not
request special attention, nor did he expect it. He usually sat
in an easy chair at the comer of the sun porch, sprawled and
smiling while Professor Guthrie talked about French classical
drama, warming himself in the inquisitive, fun-loving atmos-
phere. But occasionally he broiled steaks and fixed asparagus
with sauce vinaigrette for the entire group, and then proudly
acknowledged the expressions of surprise and pleasure at his
cooking.
At least once he gave a lengthy talk about his experiences in
the trade unions and the radical movement. Even before this
small audience, Debs paced the floor, gestured, crouched, and
pointed, used every trick of his flawless rhetoric. He was no
more successful than Steve Reynolds a t gaining recruits for
the Socialist Party, but members of the Dinner Club acquired
from its meetings a breadth of vision, a new compassion for the
problems of workingmen.
Eugene Debs reveled in his contact with friends who may
have lacked discipline and discrimination, but who possessed
mental agility and courage. Several of these men must have
reminded Debs of his own father, whom he had never thought
to call a dilettante. Daniel had bought volume after volume of
the French and German classics; he always anticipated the day
of his retirement from business, when he would again have time
to read and to study. But when Daniel finally retired, he was
nearly blind. He could not see his beloved paintings. He could
not read his precious books. So Eugene Debs, on his rare visits
THE BENDING CROSS
to Terre Haute, spent much of his time reading aloud to his
father, and he always sought out other men who were learned
in literature.
[ 3 ]
THE SECOND NATIONAL CONVENTION of the Socialist Party met
at Brand's Hall in Chicago, May 1, 1904. From thirty--six states
and territories had come 183 delegates, seven of them women.
The average age was thirty-nine years. Two-thirds of those
present had been born in the United States. Although the main
occupational groups were twenty editors, sixteen printers, and
fifteen lawyers, seventy-eight delegates were members of trade
unions. It was a young, native-born gathering of workingmen
to whom Debs said: "Thomas Jefferson would scorn to enter a
modern Democratic convention. He would ha ve as little business
there as Abraham Lincoln would have in a modern Republican
convention. If they were living today, they would be delegates
to this convention.'"
The platform was a perfect reflection of the view of Eugene
Debs. who was present as a delegate from Indiana. The battle
between wageworkers and their employers would continue, de-
clared the convention, until a socialist society had been es-
tablished in the United States. Every applicant for membership
in the Party would be required to sign a statement in which he
accepted the class struggle as the basic fact of capitalist society.
Eugene Debs was again the unanimous choice as Presidential
nominee. He tried, as always, to decline the honor, but at last
he yielded: "In the councils of the Socialist Party the collective
will is supreme. Personally, I could have wished to remain in
the ranks, to make my record, humble though it might be, fight-
ing unnamed and unhonored. side by side with my comrades."
The Vice-Presidential candidate, Ben Hanford, was entitled to
make the same statement. Although Hanford had given his
lifeto the socialist movement, his reputation rested on a single
act-he created the mythical Jimmie Higgins, the "unnamed
and unhonored" rank and file worker, the man who swept out
the meeting halls, passed out leaflets, was blaclclisted from his
job and beaten over the head by nightBticks on a thousand
picket lines. When two hundred fifty thousand people read J. A.
Wayland's epigrams in the Appeal to Rea8on, JImmie Higgins
sold the subscriptions. When ten thousand people came to a
lecture by Eugene Debs, .rlIDmie Higgins sold the ticketB. Debs,
in spite of his great prestige, was merely a fraction of a devoted,
energetic anny. The fortunes of the Socialist Party rested, not
on a few famous leaders, but on Jimmie Higgins.
Debs always attacked the egotistical pretensions of some of
his associates. In 1902 a wealthy Socialist editor tried to garner
exclusive credit for the growth of the Party in Wisconsin. Debs
urged his friend Fred Heath, then editor of the Social DemocTatic
Herald, to expose the "bragging, bluster, misrepresentation and
downright lying" of their colleague. The point was driven home
by an anecdote that Debs thought pertinent: "A fly sat on the
horn of an ox who pulled a heavy load up a steep hill. When the
top was reached the fly spread his wings and exclaimed, 'I had
a hell of a pull but 1 got here just the same! ..
The growth of monopolies furnished the major issue of the
1904 campaign. Since 1897, consolidations had taken place at a
frantic rate, until by 1904 the three hundred largest corporations
controlled more than two-fifths of the industrial capital of the
country. The United States Steel Corporation. the sugar trust,
Standard Oil, International Harvester. the American Smelting
and Refining Company, the tobacco trust, United Shoe Ma-
chiuery had all arisen in seven years to plague the workingmen,
farmers, and small businessmen. Debs ridiculed the trust-bust-
ing ideas of Theodore Roosevelt, and scoffed at the belief that
mere government ownership would solve the problem:
Every hint at public ownership is now called without
reference to the fact that there can be no Soclahsm, and that
public ownership means practically nothing, so long as the cap-
italist class is in control of the national government. Govern-
ment ownership of public utilities means nothing for labor under
capitalist ownership of government.
The other Presidential candidates, who knew Debs only as a
fierce opponent, might have wondered at two events of that
campaign, had the events become public. When Debs spoke in
THE BENDING CROSS
Camden, New Jersey, he and Steve Reynolds made a pilgrim-
age to the home of Walt Whitman. Debs gathered five elm
leaves, which he pasted on a sheet of paper and packed in his
suitcase. The leaves finally made their way into Kate Debs'
scrapbook, where they were preserved for more than forty
years. And Eugene Debs, JIl.IlXVeling at Whitman's vision of
American democracy, cried without shame as he stood on the
ground where his idol lay buried.
A few days later, the weary middle-aged Socialist stopped in
the Pittsburgh hotel where he had spent his wedding night, more
than nineteen years earlier. From this hotel he wrote a letter to
his wife in Terre Haute: "You have grown more beautiful and
more precious to me with each passing year. It is many years
ago since we came under the roof of this old hotel as bride and
groom and it seems to me that from that day to this we have
enjoyed together an unbroken honeymoon. Where I took you
as my wife I did not lose you as my friend and comrade, and
the years that trail behind us have bome beautiful testimony
of the sweetness and sanctity of our love."
The Chicago Chronicle said of this man: "Debs is opposed to
government, to society, to all political parties and to all labor
organizations .. What he and other revolutionists desire is a
state of affairs that will be intolerable and, therefore, a direct
incentive to revolt." These newspaper attacks seldom ruffled
the Socialist nominee, but he was infuriated by an obvious con-
spiracy between the California railroads and the Los Angeles
Times. Debs had not ridden in since the boycott of
1894. But, as he was going south from San Francisco, the con-
ductor announced that every the train would be side-
tracked at Bakersfield. Debs was thus forced to abandon his
boycott of Pul1man, or to arrive in Los Angeles too late for his
scheduled meeting. He did the former. When his train pulled
into Los Angeles, newsboys were already hawking the local
Times: "All about Debs riding into Los Angeles in a
General H. G. Otis, owner of the Times, obviously remembered
the tongue-lashing that Debs had administered in 1896.
Throughout that canlpaign, the Socialist machine worked in
high gear. The Party had collected a small campaign fund for
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
the first time, each member having donated a half-day's pay.
These contributions, which totaled about thirty-three thousand
dollars, permitted twenty-two organizers to remain in the field
Jimmie Higgins worked day and night, ringing doorbells, sell-
ing newspapers, talking with his shopmates and neighbors,
speaking from soapboxes and the courthouse steps, painting
large banners "Workers of the World Unite!", marching ju-
bilantly beside the bass drummer. Eugene Debs spoke to two
hundred fifty thousand people from Maine.to Oregon. And in
November, the Socialists received four hundred twenty thou-
sand votes. In four years they had quadrupled their electorate.
CHAPTER XIII
'lel
(1)
TI
SOCIALIST PARTY had been unified in 1900 by
its slight gains in the Presidential election; no such
happy result followed the much larger gains of the 1904
campaign. The advocates of revolutionary, industrial unionism
continued to clash violently with the supporters of the AFL.
By July of 1904, the schism within the Party had grown so deep
that Robert Rives LaMonte urged official neutrality on the
trade-union question, thus permitting each faction to follow its
own program. Algernon Lee replied that no Socialist should be
indifferent to the problems of union organization. Lee also
charged that the Party held certain non-proletarian and even
possibly reactionary elements," who had become members to
further their own careers.
Eugene Debs worried about this problem throughout the
1904 campaign. It seemed to him that the issue could not and
should not be compromised. His strenuous speaking tour left
him exhausted, and he was barely able to drag his weary body
back to Terre Haute. Once there, he simply collapsed. For a
week he ate, slept, listened to the phonograph, and did little
else. Then he overruled Kate's emphatic objections and began
to write Unionism and Socialism, a vivid and concise diagnosis
of trade unionism. This pamphlet, which was intended primarily
as an explanation of the current situation. became a major con-
tribution to the theory of American socialism.
The pamphlet began with an analysis of 'the development of
trade unions. In the childhood of capitalism, wrote Debs, the
workers lost ownership of their tools, which passed into the
hands of a separate owning class. Technological change increased
both the size of the factory and the strength of the corporations.
The workers, helpless as individuals, established craft unions in
each community to protect their living standards. When these
234
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
isolated local unions proved incapable of reaching their goal,
they merged to form national craft unions.
The early employers tried to crush these infant organizations,
but violent opposition often fostered trade unionism. Seeing the
futility of force, some industrialists abandoned their private
armies and Pinkerton detectives in favor of the National Civic
Federation, which professed friendship for labor in order to
"take it by the hand and guide it into harmless channels."
These owners gave relatively high wages to the skilled workers,
thus buying off any attempts by the craft unions to organize the
unskilled trades. They also became a1lied with the Federal and
state courts, and used the injunction to solve every crisis in
their labor relations.
Debs declared that the craft unions should merge into indus-
trial unions, but he added that this amalgamation would not
halt the subtle corruption of the labor movement. The workers
not only must unite, wrote Debs, they must become revolu-
tionary. They must rea1ize that the true objective of the work-
ingmen is not merely to raise wages, but to overthrow the wage
system. The wageworkers must fight on both the economic and
the p01itical battlefields. Trade unions protect the daily eco-
nomic interests of labor, and the Socia1ist Party protects its
political interests. There is great need for a revolutionary in-
dustrial union, which will be i'uncompromising" in its attempts
to advance the cause of socialism, since the AFL has deserted
this task. But this is not enough, said the pamphlet: A man who
votes for a capitalist party is little better than a scab, because
the Socialist Party is the "political movement of the working
class, clearly defined and uncompromising, which aims at the
overthrow of the prevailing capitalist system."
You can judge a tree by its fruits and a social system by its
people, said Debs. Capitalism, which daily produces "vagrants,
tramps, outcasts, paupers, thieves, gamblers, pickpockets, sui-
cides, conlidence men, fallen women, consumptives, idiots,
dwarfed children," no longer deserves to live. It is dying. So-
cialism is being born. The supreme need is to make the working-
men "conscious of the power of their class," so that they will
take their places in the struggle for a new society.
The earth for all the people. That is the demand.
The machinery of production and distribution for all the
people. That is the demand.
The collective ownership and control of industry and its
democratic management in the interest of all the people. That
is the demand.
The elimination of rent, interest and profit and the production
of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people. That is the de-
mand.
Co-operative industry in which all shall work together in
harmony as the basis of a new social order, a higher civiliza-
tion, a real republic. That is the demand.
The end of class struggles and class rule, of master and slave,
of ignorance and vice, of poverty and shame, of cruelty and
crime-the birth of freedom, the dawn of brotherhood, the be-
ginning of MAN. That is the demand.
This is socialism.
For all its eloquence, Debs' pamphlet failed in its immediate
purpose. At the AFL convention of 1904, Max Hayes, a leader
in both the AFL and the Party, stated that the Socialists would
no longer try to capture the official machinery of the unions,
but would be content to agitate for Socialist votes. Debs thought
this statement was nonsense. He failed to see how the Socialists
could educate the membership so long as Samuel Gompers and
his colleagues controlled the trade-union publications, the con-
ventions, and the leading positions in the unions. Debs feared
that certain men in the Party would trim their principles to
conform to the views of the conservative craft unionists. He
had concluded that the AFL could not be transformed into a
revolutionary union. A new labor federation was absolutely
necessary, both to organize the unskilled workers and to pro-
tect the integrity of the Socialist Party ..
Debs was not alone in this view. The American Labor Union
had been mildly successful since its formation in 1902. Its lead-
ers were convinced that a more vigorous enterprise along the
same lines would win overwhelming victories. They won en-
dorsement at the 1904 convention of the Western Federation
of Miners, which instructed the executive board to make plans
for uniting the entire working class into a single organization.
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Charles Moyer and BiVaaywood met in Denver with President
Dan McDonald of the American Labor Union and w t ~ George
Estes of the United Railway Workers. Their plans were com-
plete by late 1904.
Late in December, 1904, Thomas J. Hagerty, the former
Catholic priest with whom Debs had toured the West in 1902,
and William R Trautmann, who edited the official journal of
the Brewery Workers, arrived in Terre Haute. They talked to
Debs for several hours. While they were presenting their plan,
Debs slumped in his armchair, smoked his pipe, and gazed
intently at the picture of Karl Marx above his desk. He fre-
quently broke into their discourse with questions and elabora-
tions. A light began to kindle in his eyes. When Trautmann and
Hagerty had finished, Debs leaped from his chair and strode
about the study, eli\claiming, "1 see it! 1 see it all very clearly!"
Eugene Debs was one of the six men who signed a secret let-
ter, mailed from Chicago on December 22, 1904, to the thirty
radical leaders of the country. The recipients were invited to
meet in Chicago on January 2, 1905, to discuss ways and means
of uniting the working people of America on correct revolution-
ary principles." Debs, still confined to his home by exhaustion
and illness, doubted that he would be well enough to attend the
conference. The effects of prolonged overwork had left their
markon the fifty-year-old Socialist leader and he was recovering
slowly. .
The meeting on January 2, 1905, was another step toward
formation of the new dual union, a rival organization to the
AFL. When the conference opened, there were thirty-two dele-
gates representing nearly fifty-five thousand workers. Big Bill
Haywood and Vincent St. John were present as spokesmen for
the Western Federation of Miners, the largest supporting union.
Trautmann and Hagerty both played leading r6les. Mother
Mary Jones, the fearless seventy-:fi.ve-year-old organizer of the
miners, was one of the best known participants. Charles O.
Sherman represented the United Metal Workers, a group which
had seceded from the AFI... This group of radical unionists
drafted a manifesto which demanded the formation of a new,
THE BENDING CROSS
revolutionary, industrial union. They also called a conference
for June 27, 1905, at Brand's Hall in Chicago formally to launch
the organization.
More than two hundred delegates and scores of spectators
crowded into Brand's Hall on June 27. Debs, Mother Jones,
and Bill Haywood were on the speakers' platform; the delega.tes
inclu.ded Trautmann, Sherman, Moyer, Father Hagerty. Lucy
Parsons, widow of one of the Haymarket martyrs, became the
second woman to join the order. Daniel DeLeon led a group from
the Socialist Trades and- Labor Alliance, which he h8.d founded
ten years earlier. Debs, Haywood, Ernest Untermann, and
A. M. Simons, editor of the International Socialist Review, rep-
resented the left-wing faction of the Socialist Party. Several
members of the right wing, including Victor Berger and Max!
Hayes, had been invited. Berger had not even bothered to
answer the invitation. Hayes had replied that he thought there
was a good chance to capture the AFL and depose the bureau
crats, so he intended to agitate for socialism within t h ~ craft
unions.
Exactly at 10 A.M., Bill Haywood lumbered to the front of the
platform, picked up a loose piece of board, and rapped on the
table for order. Haywood had puzzled over the proper wayof
addressing the delegates. He could not call them "Comrades"
-many were not socialists. Use of the phrase "Brothers and
Sisters" was absolutely banned because it would imply some
concession to the hated AFL But the problem had been re-
solved. This burly giant turned his head to the side, beat furl
ously on the table with his piece of lumber, and shouted down
the last whispers in the audience:
Fellow workers! . . . The aims and objects of this organization
should be to put the working class in possession of the economic
power, the means of life, in control of the machinery of produc-
tion and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters.
This spirit dominated the discussions. The delegates urged
the working class to unite in order to seize control of the o u n ~
try. The new organization, which was named the Industrial
Workers of the World, decided to admit only wageworkers to
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
membership, but any person who held a union card in any
foreign country wo'uld be accepted without question. This feel-
ing of international friendship was shown by two other resolu-
tions. The convention heartily welcomed the revolution which
Was then taking place in Russia. It also adopted May DaYt
which had originated in the AFL's campaign for the eight-hour
day in 1886, as the international holiday of the workingmen.
Eugene Debs, obviously ill at ease in a convention, spoke
only once, on the afternoon of the third day. His brief speech
was a' plea for unity in the organization. There was ample cause
for apprehension on this count. The convention held every shade
of radical opinion:' Debs' socialism, Lucy Parsons' anarchism,
Mother Jones' trade unionism, Bill Haywood's developing
syndicalism. Individual differences, jealousy, and fights for
position, were certain among these strong-willed men. DeLeon
had never learned to co-operate with anybody. Charles Sher-
man and several other leaders were considered as mere pie-card
artists, men who wanted easy jobs for themselves. Big Bill Hay-
wood as he listened to Debs' speech, was already conscious of
one source of friction:
Debs was the workingman who had laid down his shovel on the
locomotive when he took up the work of organizing the firemen.
Debs' ideas, while not clearly developed, were built upon his
contact with the workers in their struggle. DeLeon's onlr con-
tact with the workers was through the ideas with which he
wished to "indoctrinate". them, to use his own word.
At the conclusion of his speech, Debs was approached by re-
porters from the Chicago newspapers, who asked for a statement
about the objectives of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Each of them was furnished with copies of the constitution,
excerpts from several addresSes, and the plans of the IWW . Not
a word of this material was ever printed. The same sequence of
events occurred two days later. The newspapers filled column
after column with attacks on the radical union, but they were
unwilling to publicize its announced aims.
Even the Socialist press took a hostile position. Max Hayes'
Cleveland Citizen. the New York F01'Ward of Morris Hillquit
THE BENDING CROSS
and Abe Cahan, the Social De7nOC1'atic Herold of Victor Berger
and Fred Heath, all att&cked the IWW. A few days after the
founding convention, Debs met Victor Berger in. Racine, Wis-
consin. Debs predicted that the IWW would soon have a strong
following in Milwaukee. Berger laughed at him. The next issue
of the SocUd Democratic Herald conceded that Eugene Debs was
an excellent fellow, but it also implied that he was a bigot and
a fool. Debs found this a fine combination that I suppose I
should be proud of." The Herald charged that Debs and his
colleagues were guilty of splitting the trade unions, and advised
them to return to the labor movement and the Socialist Party.
This was more than Debs coUId tolerate. With the jeering
face of Victor Berger before his eyes, he wrote an indignant
letter to one of the editors of the Herold. "Since when," he
asked, "has the S. D. Herald become theofficial organ and spe-
cial champion of the A.F. of L.r And since when is it a condition
of membership in the Socialist Party that one must belong to
the A.F. of L.? The Chicago dailies are aIL like the S. D.
Herald; the champions 0 f the A.F. 0 fL., guard it and defend it,
and if this is not significant, then nothing is. h ~ y understand
the rottenness of the old trade union movement , but it is
good enough for them. in fact just what they want, for a rotten
labor movement is their salvation and that is why they lied
about the Industrial convention and why they hold up the A.F.
of L. as the one organization for workingmen to tie to."
In this letter, Debs denied every charge that had been made
against the IWW. He denied that he had deserted his former
faith: I have simply joined a labor union that suits me. That's
all." He denied that Berger and Heath could make the AFL into
"a clean industrial union": "The Brotherhood of Engineers is
where it was thirty years ago and there it will remain forever
so far as any change from within is concerned." He denied that
the IWW would split the labor movement: Just take a glance
at Chicago today and in the presence of such a situation the
talk of splitting the trade union movement is nothing less than
idiotic." Debs thought that the AFL was already divided by a
factional struggle for power; he wanted to divide it according to
principles.
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Debs, when he wrote this letter, was so incensed that he made
several extreme statements. He .declared that the June 27 con-
vention "was in many respects the most representative pro-
letarian gathering I have ever seen. . . . I saw not one who was
ambitious for personal laurels, not one who wanted office, not
one who in any sense was a self-seeker and I am proud and shall
always be of being a delegate, whatever the outcome may be."
Debs ~ l s o charged that ''Berger and Heath probably never
worked for wages a day in their lives, have no trade,never had
on a pair of overalls and really have no excuse to be in a trade
union at all, and yet they appear in leading trade union rtlles
and tell me to what particular union I must belong under pen-
alty of being visited with their displeasure." The entire tone
of Debs' letter was bitter, vitriolic, but, typically, he softened
it at the end: "In closing allow me to say that I am deeply sen-
sible of all your personal words. For you and the Milwaukee
comrades I would do anything but violate my conscience. That
I will not do and that you will not expect."
Fred Heath, in a prompt reply, pointed out several misstate-
ments in Debs' letter. Both he and Berger, in point of fact, had
been wage earners for much longer than Eugene Debs. Debs had
largely forgotten that he had worked on the railroads less than
five years. Heath declared that every trade union had a certain
number of cropks. The ARU had included "such skates as
Hogan, Howard, Bill Burns, and Goodwin"; the IWW also had
its share of these men. Whim Debs joined the IWW, he de-
serted his former comrades and allied himself with Daniel
DeLeon, who was "an enemy of Socialism and a prevaricator
and slanderer," with anarchists like Lucy Parsons and Father
Hagerty, and with countless "industrial fakirs," according to
Heath.
Heath also claimed that the AFL could be captured by the
Socialists: ~ t we have done in Milwaukee can be done
everywhere else, if you fellows have the gumption to do it.
And its the only right way to go about it." It was not true, said
Heath, that Debs had a monopoly on virtue; he himself was
"moved by a sense of duty to the cause." It was to be hoped
that Debs would reconsider his rash action in joining the IWW:
THE BENDING CROSS
"This is not saying that you are not a free agent, it is reminding
you that Eugene V. Debs, leader in the Socialist party, should
shrink from identifying himself with a movement calculated
to do injury to the party-if it were to succeed at all. . As
ever-your pal."
This exchange of angry letters merely served to widen the
gap. Debs admitted, in the ~ Socialist RetJiew, that
the delegates to the June 27 convention had disagreed about
details, but they had agreed perfectly on the need for a new
industrial union. In all of his speeches and pamphlets Debs de-
fended the IWW and attacked the AFL. Referring to the Na-
tional Civic Federation, he claimed that every beast of prey
told its victims: ''Our interests are one"; then the victim was
eaten. The employers, said Debs; will never consent to a fair
scale of wages. But if the workers realize their combined power,
they can easily overthrow the entire wage system:
As individual wage-slaves you are helpless and your condition
hopeless. As a class, you are the greatest power between the
earth and the stars. As a class, your chains turn to spider-webs
and in your presence capitalists shrivel up and blow away.
The indiVIdual wage-slave must recognize the power of class
unity and do all he can to bring it about.
This conviction of brotherhood and solidarity, which formed
the recurring theme in Debs' public expressions, was equally
prominent in his conversation and personal letters. Writing to
Joseph A. Labadie, the Detroit anarchist, in December, 1905,
Debs said: "In all these relations we poor, petty individuals,
as such, amount to little, . but as we come in real touch
with each other and draw upon each other for strength and size,
and feel the essential unity of the race, we grow tall as gods, and
our heads are among the stars."
At this time Debs was lecturing in the East to rally support
for the Socialist Party and the IWW. He had often demon-
strated his willingness to set aside personal quarrels and minor
disputes in order to gain agreement on fundamentals. This will-
ingness was strikingly demonstrated by his relations with Dan-
iel DeLeon. Debs had often referred to DeLeon as a "scoundrel"
but he now brushed aside the accumulated rancor and defended
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
the leader of the Socialist Labor Party. In the autumn of 1905,
he wrote for the Miners' Magazine: "DeLeon is sound on the
question of trade unionism, and to that extent, whether I like
him or not personally, I am with him." But, in spite of this hint
about Debs' attitude, his SociaUst colleagues were astonished
by later developments.
On December 10, 1905, Debs gave a speech about the IWW at
Grand Central Palace in New York City. Before the meeting,
Daniel DeLeon went backstage with his wife and his son Solon,
then a youngman. Solon DeLeon, who was but little more than
five feet in height, had the impression of Debs "coming down
out of the sky to me;" Then Debs was shaking his hands warmly
and saying, ~ h y , Comrade DeLeon has a son almost as big
as he is." Solon, quite flustered by this comment, seemed even
smaller as he replied, "'But not as big as Comrade Debs."
Da.niel DeLeon was puzzled, throughout Debs' address, be-
cause Debs consistently faced the side of the hall where the
DeLeons were sitting. Finally the SLP leader noticed that the
other side of the hall was a solid mass of German socialists, all
active)n the AFL, who were completely opposed to the IWW.
Not even Debs' oratory could sway them. But Daniel DeLeon
remarked Debs' hold on the remainder of his audience. DeLeon
always refrained from emotional appeals in his speeches, pre-
ferring to be deliberate and logical Later, in discussing Debs'
speech with his colleagues in the SLP, DeLeon commented,
"What Debs can do, I can't do, and what I can do, Debs can't
do."
Members of the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party
were equally confused by the depth of co-operation between
Debs and DeLeon. Their confusion was greatly magnified when
DeLeon republished, as an SLP pamphlet, Debs' address at
Grand Central Palace. And the following summer Debs again
struck at his colleagues in his own party: "The fact is that most
of the violent opposition of Socialist party members to the
I.W.W. is centered upon the head of DeLeon and has a purely
personal animus."
The right wing of the Socialist Party had already taken steps
to discipUne the dissidents. Debs' weekly column in the Social
THE BENDING CROSS
DemocroJ;ic Herald, which had appeared continuously for more
than two years, was dropped in October, 1905. Big Bill Haywood
and Debs were now regarded as outcasts by Berger, Morris
Hillquit, and J. Ma.hlon Barnes, the national secretary of the
Party. But Debs, always indifferent to the official policies of
the Party, was not dismayed by the attacks of a few leaders.
He had repeatedly said that he had no ambitions for place and
power; his classic formulation of this attitude was made in a
speech at Turner Hall in Detroit, January 11, 1906: "But I am
no labor leader. I don't want you to follow me, or anyone else.
If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist
wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead
you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead
you in someone else could lead you out. You must use your
heads as well as your hands and get yourselves out of your pres-
ent condition."
There was reason to doubt, at that moment, if labor would
ever reach "the promised land." The IWW had divided both
the labor movement and the Party into warring camps. It
separated men who had been friends for years, and united men
who had always been enemies. Samuel Gompers referred to the
IWW as "Father Hagerty's Wheel of Fortune," but this jest
was mere bravado. Gompers was actually frightened by the new
competitor. The AFL, which had been quiescent for more than
a year, was racked with ferment by the beginning of 1906.
Various cliques within the craft unions were fighting each other,
and they were all fighting the industrial unions. The supporters
of each group in the Socialist Party were waging a vitriolic
battle in the newspapers and in local meetings. The anarchists
were attacking the socialists, and the socialists were attacking
the labor fakers. It was impossible to conceive any issue on
which there could be agreement. But such an issue occurred.
Bill Haywood, Charles Moyer, and a Denver businessman
named George Pettibone were indicted for murder.
[ 2 ]
ON DECEMBER 80, 1905, former Governor Frank Steunenberg
of Idaho was killed by a bomb as he opened the gate to his home
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
at Caldwell, Idaho. A certain Harry Orchard, a member of the
Western Federatiim of Miners .. was arrested on suspicion. Two
weeks later, Orchard dictated a full confession to the manager
of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in Denver, claiming that
Baywood, Moyer, and Pettibone had hired him to kill Steunen-
berg. Their alleged motive was a desire for revenge aga,inst the
former governor, who had called out the militia during the Coeur
d'Alene disturbance of 1899.
A secret complaint against the accused men, all of whom Hved
in Denver, was filed in Canyon County, Idaho, a month after
Orchard's confession. The governor of Colorado secretly signed
extradition papers. One Saturday night, when the courts were
closed so that the defendants could not secure a legal stay of
the extradition, the three men were arrested. They were es-
corted directly to a special train, on which they were the only
passengers. This train was given absolute right of way to Idaho,
proving that there had been careful arrangements between two
governors and the railroad. Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone
were jointly indicted for the murder on March 6, 1906.
The commercial newspapers were immediately in full cry for
justice, and their notion of justice was dramatically revealed
by a headline in the Chicago Tribune:
Arrests Thwart
Vast Murder Plot
Moyer and Baywood of West-
ern Miners' Federation
Suspected of Fiend-
ish Conspiracy
James McParlan, the Pinkerton detective who had extracted
the confession from Harry Orchard, told a Tribune reporter
that the accused men "will never leave Idaho alive." McParland
also stated that Moyer and Baywood had planned to "destroy
the train" on which they were to be taken to Idaho, so he had
insisted on a special train. Even if the accused were acquitted
in Idaho, said McParlan, he had "information and proof of
their connection with a dozen atrocious murders in Colorado."
Debs beHeved that this newspaper hysteria was designed to
THE BENDING CROSS
immobilize every cry for a fair trial. Perhaps he remembered
his own equivocal rOle in the Haymarket defense campaign,
and was determined that such a frame-up would not occur
again. He did not doubt that the current indictments were a
frame-up. Pettibone seemed to be merely an incidental victim.
window-dressing to conceal the true aim of the indictments. The
entire proceedings, thought Debs, were an attempt to dispose
of two leaders of the IWW, Bill Haywood and Charles Moyer.
Within twenty-four hours after he heard about the indictments.
Eugene Debs had mailed his comment on the case to the Ap-
peal to
Debs was shrewd to choose the Appeal as the outlet for his
article. By the autumn' of 1905, J. A. Wayland's weekly was
sent from Girard, Kansas, to a quarter-million enthusiastic
subscribers. Its circulation was evenly divided between the
cities and the rural areas; it was read in the steel mills of Pitts-
burgh and the country stores of Oklahoma. There was a second,
reason why Debs favored the Appeal. Wayland and Fred War-
ren operated their newspaper disregard of libel.
laws. They 'had engaged in contin:Ous:'battle with the postal
authorities in Washington, and had won at every tum. These
experiences had taught Fred Warren, editor of the Appeal.
that he should never print an item he could not prove. But if
there was proof, Warren never hesitated to print the article
and take his chance in court.
Debs' comments about the Moyer-Haywood indictments,
however, were so inflammatory that even Fred Warren hesi-
tated to authorize publication. When the article arrived in
Girard, Warren read it through several times, shook his head,
and took it to J. A. Wayland. Wayland read it carefully, and
then paced up and down the room. Finally he dropped it on
Warren's desk and said calmly, "Fred, you have been doing
most of it lately, and I guess you'll have to do as you please
about this." Warren then asked if Wayland realized that pub-
lication of the article might lead to "the suppression of the
Appeal and the arrest for feloniously inciting to armed rebel-
lion of everyone of us." Wayland was still calm: "Yes, and the
only question I want you to settle in your mind before acting
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
is, WIll it work to the best interests of Socialism." Warren de-
cided to print the article. .
The headline on the Appeal of March 10 roared at its readers:
AROUSE, YE SLAVES!
The center of the front page contained Debs' answer to the
statement that the indicted men "will never leave Idaho alive."
"Well. by the gods, if they do not," wrote Debs. "the governors
of Idaho and Colorado and the masters from Wall Street, New
York, to the Rocky Mountains had better prepare to follow
them."
Nearly twenty years ago the capitalist tyrants put some in-
nocent men to death for standing up for labor.
They are now going to try it again. Let them dare I There
have been. w ~ t y rears of revolutionary education. agitation,
and organIzatIOn SInce the Haymarket tragedy, and if an at-
tempt is made to repeat it. there will be a revolution and I will
do all in my power to precipitate it. The crisis has come and we
have to meet it ....
H they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their
brothers. a million revolutionists at least will meet them with
guns. .
Debs' threats did not paralyze or coerce the prosecution. The
Idaho Supreme Caurt, on March 12, denied a petition for a writ
of habeas corpus, and the Federal District Court also denied
the petition ten days later. The decision was immediately ap-
pealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, and Debs
intensified his efforts to arouse the trade unions. His activities
met with striking success. Ten barrels of ink, six carloads of
newsprint. three thousand mailbags. and ten United States
mail cars were needed to print and mail a single edition of the
Appeal to Reason. Debs again charged that the prosecution
was trying to lynch the defendants. "The fight is on." he de-
clared. "It has been forced upon us. We are not responsible
for it. We a.re not favoring violence but resisting it. We are seek-
ing not to commit, but to prevent murder. Beware the wrath of
an outraged and avenging people."
In addition to his weekly articles in the Appeal, Debs gave
hundreds of speeches from coast to coast in defense of Moyer
THE BENDING CROSS
and Haywood. He found that the labor movement was grad-
ually beginning to grasp the significance of the case. The de-
fense campaign was by no means a one-man show. Even the
craft unions were protesting. The leaders of the AFL entered the
fight, hesitantly at first, then more emphatically. Both factions.
of the Socialist Party were trying to mobilize support for the
defendants. The radical newspapers hea.dlined every develop-
ment and printed countless editorials on the corruption of the
capitalist courts. Throughout the country, Jimmie Higgins,
the mythical rank and filer, was talking to his neighbors, pass-
ing out leaflets, offering resolutions in meetings.
Debs spent several months in the West and Northwest. where
Moyer and Haywood were already celebrities in the trade
unions. In Denver, where the newspaper hysteria was at its
peak, Debs discovered a surprising amount of support for the
defendants. He was even invited to address the Press Club
there, and the president gave him a very cordial introduction:
"Gene Debs may be a Socialist, but there are a few democrats
in these western diggin's who love him for the good he has done."
Although Debs had never admitted, even to himself, the pos-
sibility that Moyer and Haywood might hang, he was doubtless
encouraged by the breadth and determination of the defense
campaign. Everything seemed to be going well, when suddenly
tragedy struck at his family;
Daisy Debs died in the spring of 1906, at .the age of seventy-
eight. Thus separated from his wife, largely blind, eighty-six
years old, Daniel lost all will to live. In the autumn he too died,
quietly, willingly. This gigantic blow at Eugene Debs was fur-
ther complicated by the death of Kate's only brother, Daniel
Metze!. A weaker man than Debs might have been completely
prostrated. He had constantly looked to his parents for advice
and encouragement. They had never failed him. In the fifty
years of Debs' life, no incident had occurred to mar his respect
for Daisy and Daniel. Many years later, when he was himself
an old man, he told a reporter: "I never knew my mother until
she died. We never know anyone until they are dead. Then we
understand their work and we love them for it, whether or not
they succeeded. OJ
A MERICAN SOCIALISM
Now Eugene Debs. who had been totally absorbed in the
tangible problems of food and shelter, marched blindly into the
greatest puzzle of them all. In his agony he pondered the in-
scrutability of life, the swooping breathlessness of death, the
:6nite line between existence and its cessation. After the manner
of the healthy and the optimistic, he had always assumed that
life is eternal. This view was shattered. On January 10, 1907.
six weeks after the death of his father, he wrote his own will and
testament. The entire text was less than thirty words: "I,
Eugene V. Debs, of Terre Haute, Vigo County, Indiana. hereby
will and bequeath all my property, real and personal, to my be-
loved wife, Katherine M. Debs."
The anguish promoted by the triple tragedy in his family
aggravated a number of bodily ills, originally caused by his
furious activity for Haywood and Moyer. ReeDITent attacks of
rheumatism forced him back to Terre Haute. His throat, ir-
ritated by a dozen speeches each day, felt as if he had been
eating glass, and he visited a throat specialist in Cincinnati. But
he refused to be diverted hom his main purpose. Early in Jan-
uary of 1907, he wrote to J. A. Wayland that he intended to
"come to Girard . and take a hand at helping you on the
Appeal." Debs said that only the force of public opinion could
possibly save Moyer and Haywood: "If we cannot arouse the
people sufficiently to threaten revolt on a large scale they are
gone. Nothing else can save them."
By the end of January, 1907. Debs had arrived in Girard.
When he walked into the office of the Appeal, his first words
closed the deal: "I want to do something in this crisis. It must
be something far-reaching. Only through the colUIllIlS of the
Appeal can I express myself as I will, and reach the audience
that I must." Fred Warren, known among the prairie socialists
as The Fighting Editor, was receptive to this offer. Debs was
promptly hired at a salary of a hundred dollars a week as a
contributing editor.
Thus began one of the happiest partnerships in the history
of the radical movement. Wayland, who was a few years older
than Debs, had masterfully combined sound business manage-
ment of the paper with its socialist purpose. men Wayland
THE BENDING CROSS
stepped aside in 1904, Warren continued and perfected these
practices. The Appeal, by the time Debs joined its staff, em-
ployed more than a hundred men and women. Its mailing costs
and payroll each amounted to more than twelve hundred dol-
lars each week. Here, indeed, was a socialist organ that cQuld
furnish Debs with an extensive audience. And the Appeal, for
its part, was certain to benefit from Debs' weekly articles and
his lectures in its behalf.
As soon as he had worked out his arrangements with Fred
Warren, Debs left Girard for another tour of the mining areas
of the West. The Supreme Court of the United States, in De-
cember, 1906, had denied a Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone peti-
tion for a writ of habeas corpus, and thus had remanded the
case to a trial court in Boise. The sole hope for saving the three
defendants now lay in a favorable verdict by the jury. But the
commercial press had convicted the labor leaders before their
trial even began. Debs thought it necessary to take steps to
counteract this publicity campaign, so he interrupted his tour
and went to Washington, D. C. Mter two weeks of intensive
lobbying, he persuaded Senator Carmacl; of to
enter allrecords of the case into the Congresaiunal &card. Well
satisfied with this result, which was widely publicized, Debs
again returned to the lecture platform in Colorado.
Personal sorrow at the death of his parents, bad health, and
prolonged exertion had left their mark on Debs. Frank O'Hare,
a young Socialist organizer who was also mobilizing support for
Moyer and Haywood, encountered him one day on a train in
Colorado. Debs, sound asleep and dead drunk, was curled up in
a chair in the smoker. When O'Hare tapped him on the shoul-
der, he jumped up, blinked, and shouted in a loud voice, "Hello,
Frank, you old son of a gun, how are you?" And then he con-
tinued his maudlin monologue, "You know, Frank, been
out lecturing for Haywood for two months, and three days ago
I passed through Terre Haute and I couldn't even get off the
train for an hour to see Ducky."
O'Hare was not easily embarrassed, but he felt rather un-
comfortable with this lanky frame drape!! around his neck and
slobbering on his collar. He kept saying in soothing tones, "I
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
2.61
know, Gene. Sit down, Gene." Finally he succeeded in pushing
Debs back into the chair and putting him back to sleep. When
the train arrived in Pueblo at 6 o'cl,ock, Debs was still unable
to walk or to talk coherently. He was slated to speak at 8:30.
and O'Hare was determined that the audience would not be dis-
appointed.
The local committee which met Debs was astonished to find
him drunk; they had considered him a god, not at all like other
men. But O'Hare rallied the committee, formed a flying wedge,
and hustled Debs through the waiting crowd into a cab. At the
hotel they registered Debs in one room, then took him to another
to a void his admirers. O'Hare rolled the Socialist leader into
bed, stationed two guards in the room and a third in the cor-
ridor, and gave them exact instructions: Wake him up at 8
o'clock; give him a bowl of soup and a cup of coffee; and bring
him directly to the meeting. Then O'Hare grabbed a hasty
meal and rushed to the ball to stall the audience until 8 :80 .
. Precisely on time, Debs stepped onto the stage. He acknowl-
edged O'Hare's brief introduction and began his speech. As
usual, he charmed the audience. They were spellbound. And
O'Hare grinned knowingly at the three young miners who had
rolled a drunk man into bed just two hours earlier.
On the very eve of the trial in Boise, when tension had be-
coine unbearable, Eugene Debs crossed swords with a worthy
opponent. Theodore Roosevelt also was accomplished, in his
spectacular Rough Rider w y ~ at the art of capturing head-
lines. A year earlier he had made his first pr.onouncement on the
Moyer-Haywood case. The occasion was the laying of the cor-
nerstone of the new House of Representatives building, in
Washington. While the entire nation listened, the President
compared certain industrialists to "the so-called labor leader
who' clamorously strives to excite a foul class feeling on behalf
of some other labor leader who is'implicated in murder." On
April 2, 1907, Roosevelt again turned to the events in Idaho.
His conduct would have been brash in a private citizen, but
when cloaked with the prestige of the Presidency it seemed like
gross treachery. At a press conference. he made public a letter
in which he stated that a particular railroad magnate was "at
THE BENDING CROSS
least as undesirable a citizen as Debs, or Moyer, or Haywood."
Eugene Debs would certainly have resented the reference to
his own character, but he boiled over at the notion that the
President was trying to convict Moyer and Haywood. He pub-
licly accused Roosevelt of improper action, and charged that
the President was conniving at the legal murder of two labor
leaders. Nor was Debs alone in this opinion. Many commercial
newspapers and conservative while believing merely
that Roosevelt had made a mistake, nevertheless agreed that
it was a serious mistake. The President issued another state-
ment denying that he had implied that Moyer and Haywood
were guilty of murder, but Debs was not to be appeased so
easily. In an article that was printed by several major news-
papers, Debs said that the President was lying when he denied
his earlier statement: "He thus stands pilloried before the Amer-
ican people. If he attempts to deny the charge, I shall convict
him with the proof." Debs a.Iso claimed that the public outcry
had forced Roosevelt to retract his original letter: 'ex-
planation' of President Roosevelt is the first decisive victory
for organized labor in the kidnapping battle of the class war
in the United States."
Although Roosevelt backed down on his statement about
Moyer and Haywood, he continued to attack Debs, and he
called the Appeal to Reason a "vituperative organ of pornog-
raphy, anarchy and bloodshed." Debs promptly replied that
the President was both a coward and a hypocrite. He asked why
Roosevelt had never denounced his own who had said
"To hell with the constitution" and "To hell with habeas
corpus; we'll give 'em postmortems." And then came the cruel-
est cut of all:
Does the President remember one John P. Altgeld?
And one Theodore Roosevelt who in the same year of 1896
said that said Altgeld and one Debs should be lined up against
a dead wall and shot?
Which said Roosevelt never denied until four years later,
when he became candidate for Vice President?
Is this the "temperate" language of a perfectly "desirable"
citizen?
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
The rancorous dispute between Debs and Roosevelt helped
to fasten the country's attention on the courtroom in Boise,
Idaho, where Bill Haywood was already being tried. It also
gave added impetus to the defense campaign. The entire labor
movement had rallied to the cause of the defendants. Protest
parades were held in every major city during the spring months.
In San Francisco an unprecedented crowd heard several speak-
ers impugn the motives of the prosecution. Fifty thousand men
marched through the streets of Boston, chanting in unison:
If Moyer and Haywood die; if Moyer and Haywood die;
Twenty million workingmen will know the reason why.
On May 4 two long files of men and women estimated at twenty
thousand persons, began to parade uptown from the lower East
Side of New York City. The two files merged into one at 40th
Street and Lexington Avenue and continued their parade to
Grand Central Palace, where a frenzied throng heard John
Chase, Morris Hillquit, "and Joshua Wanhope denounce the
proceedings in Idaho.
While these protest parades were being duplicated throughout
the country, Eugene Debs continued to needle Theodore Roose-
velt: "Patrick Henry was denounced by King George and Wil-
liam Haywood by President Theodore." On May 28, when
Haywood's trial was in its sixth week. Debs finished his prepara-
tions to leave for Boise as a special correspondent for the Appeal.
Then his trip was cancelled at the request of the defense at-
torneys, Clarence Darrow and E. F. Richardson. Debs was un-
douhtedly disappointed. and he probably resented Darrow's
blunt suggestion that he stay out of Boise, but he yielded to the
judgment of the attorneys. Bill Haywood, in his autobiography,
later charged that Darrow was motivated by his desire to save
the center of the stage for himself, but this interpretation prob-
ably missed the real point. Darrow, in spite of his cynicism,
continued to believe that the capitalist courts dispensed justice.
He thought that Debs' presence in Boise would prejudice the
jury against the defendants. Both Debs and Haywood vigor-
ously dissented from this view, and argued that only an aroused
citizenry could guarantee a fair trial
THE BENDING CROSS
The headlong, hectic defense campaign grew iIi vigor through
the three long, breathless months of Haywood's trial. On June
i9, when the trial was in its seventh week, the Appeal predicted
an acquittal, but there was no diminution of the public protests
against the prosecution. Debs called the trial "the greatest legal
battle in American history." This comment approached the
truth. Trade unionists and socialists had contributed more than
sixty thousand dollars to fight the case. Literally hundreds of
protest meetings were held. Not since the Dred Scott case in
1857 had such militant action been conducted to protest a
'court's decision.
In Boise the trial swept to a dramatic,climax. The case was
given to the jury about 10 o'clock one Saturday evening. All
night the streets were filled with groups of men awaiting the
verdict. At 7 A.M. Sunday word was sent that the jury had
agreed, and the verdict was read to a jammed, silent courtroom
one hour later. As soon as the decision was known, the crowd
rushed into the streets, reporters ran for the telegraph office, the
streets filled with a boisterous, raucous crowd, some men hilari-
ous in their joy, others surly in their disappointment.
On August 3, the Appeal to !Wason trumpeted victory. Hay-
wood had been acquitted. The socialist weekly printed an ordi-
nary front page, then superimposed over it in gigantic red
letters:
NOT
GUILTY
After the acquittal of Haywood, it was mere formality to win
the trials of Pettibone and Moyer. The labor movement had
won. It had saved its leaders.
When the battle was finished, many men asked the same ques-
tion: What would Debs have done ii Haywood had been con-
victed? Would he have marched to Idaho at the head of "a
million revolutionists with guns," as he had threatened? It
seems likely that Debs himself did not fully resolve this question.
Soon after his flaming articles in the Appeal, he left Stephen
Reynolds' home one day in the company of a friend who was a
respected professional man in Terre Haute. The friend com-
mented, "Gene, sometimes I just can't take some of these wild
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
things you write in the Appeal to Rea30n." According to the
friend, Debs replied, "Well, you have to give the workingmen
something vigorous if you want to wake them up."
Since it was not necessary for Debs to reach a decision, any
answer is speculative, but a hint is given by the Socialistleader's
adulation of Old John Brown, that violent revolutionary who
led twenty-one anned men into the death trap at Harper's
Ferry. Debs was neither a terrorist nor a doctrinaire pacifist. He
had never raised his hand in anger against a fellow being, either
as boy or man. He believed that only the most extreme provo-
cation could ever justify the use of violence. On the other hand,
he believed that this degree of provocation existed in certain
situations. On March 16, 1907, he wrote in the New York
Worker: "It is not that we object to the lawful punishment of
crime; not at all. The precise contrary is true. Weare opposed
to the commission of crime, especially in the name and under the
forma of law." * And there can be little doubt that Debs was in
deadly earnest about the proceedings in Boise. There was no
bravado in his comment to several friends: "If they hang Hay-
wood and Moyer, they'll have to hang me."
[ 3 1
DEBS had reason to be proud of his part in the defense of Moyer
and Haywood, which compensated in some measure for his role
in the Haymarket campaign. But the legal battIe of 1906 and
1907 had not been wholly a triumph, since it almost destroyed
the Industrial Workers of the World.
The membership of the IWW was centered in the western
states, where many workingmen scorned the established prin-
ciples of trade unionism. This tendency had been held in check
by the influence of the Western Federation of Miners, which
founded stable local unions, signed contracts with employers,
and fought for control of working conditions in the factories and
workshops. The imprisonment of Haywood for fifteen months,
and the involvement of his supporters in his defense campaign.
permitted his enemies to capture the Western Federation of
Miners. They promptly withdrew it from the IWW. Having
'" The italics are the author's.
THE BENDING CRO$S
lost its membership among those workers with stable employ.
m n ~ the IWW ceased to function as a trade union. Its ranks
held a select cprps of organizers and strike leaders but not a
single business agent. It became an organization which was
geared to meet crises but which did not offer guidance to the
workers on a stable, dayto.day basis.
This new trend was simply nonsense to Eugene Debs, who
well understood the value of collective bargaining. But Debs'
main quarrel with the IWW pivoted on another issue. The
Moyer-Haywood trial, even more than the Pullman boycott,
turned the radical leaders against the government itself. Social-
ist politics and capitalist politics became equally bad Elections
were a lot of bunk. The trade unions themselves should run the
country. This viewpoint, the philosophy of anarcho-syndicalism,
dominated the IWW by 1908. That spring the IWW convention
dropped the last mention of political action from the preamble
to the order's constitution.
It was inevitable that Eugene Debs, who insisted on both iIi-
dustrial unions and the Socialist Party as the cornerstones of
sound policy, would resign from the IWW. His traditional
practice demanded a public statement of the reasons for his
resignation. He had issued such statements when he left the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Social Democracy
of America. In 1900 he had publicized the sources of his disagree-
ment with Daniel DeLeon. But he could not bring himself to
attack the IWW. The organization was led by men with whom
he had co-operated for years. Bill Haywood, one of the main
spokesmen for the erroneous policies of the IWW, was still a
leader in the Socialist Party. And the IWW. with its militant
spirit and unyielding honesty, could still be of service to the
American workingmen. So Eugene Debs, in a case that stands
without parallel in his entire career, simply permitted his dues
to lapse and his membership in the IWW to expire.
[ 4 ]
W HEN EUGENE DEBS helped to establish the Industrial Workers
of the World in 1905, he selected a method that defeated his own
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
U7
purpose. Debs and his colleagues conceived of the IWWas a
powerful instrument in the campaign for industrial unions. They
confidently eXpected that the IWW would soon demonstrate its
superiority over the craft unions, and that the majority of craft
unionists would rally to the standard of the New Unionism. This
failed to happen for several reasons: the employers made con-
cessions to the AFL, but fought viciously against the IWW.
Many workers had a financial stake in the iysurance funds of
the estabJished unions, and they were unwilling to sacrifice
these benefits. The workers' own sense of labor solidarity drove
them into the largest federation, the AFL, and mere habit
tended to keep them there. AFL knew the importance of
stable locals, signed confiaas,-an.d control of working condi-
tions.
Thus the formation of the IWW tended to delay rather than
to promote the campaign for industrial unions and socialism.
Eugene Debs always argued that the labor movement should
strive for the complete destruction of the wage system. But in
1905, by his own action, he isolated himself from the great
majority of the organized workers, who still clung to the AFL.
The leaders of the AFL denied everything that Debs affirmed.
Samuel Gompers was not merely a craft unionist; he also bitterly
opposed the theory that the labor movement should fight for
socialism or any other ultimate goaL His program was based on
the improvement of living standards within the capitalist frame-
work: More; Here; Now. Inadvertently, Debs had delivered the
basic organizations of the workingmen, the trade unions, into
the grip of Gompers' philosophy.
The example of his own American Railway Union doubtless
inclined Eugene Debs toward the IWW, but the two cases were
not the same. Only tortured reasoning could call the ARU a dual
union. The ARU came into being because the
Brotherhoods had failed to organize many railroaders who were
eager for organization. It was led by a group of men who already
had immense prestige on the railroads. From its very origin, it
scored overwhelming victories. By working among the unskiUed
and neglected crafts-the switchmen, section hands, the carmen
-it achieved a membership greater than the combined strength
268
THE BENDING CROSS
of the Brotherhoods. It was able to extract signed contracts
from two of the strongest corporations in the country, the Union
Pacific and the Great Northern. If Debs and his colleagues had
not founded the American Railway Union, the workingmen
themselves would have established local organizations in hun-
dreds of railroad towns.
The real reason behind Debs' infatuation with dual unionism
was not related to the ARD. Eugene Debs considered every
question in terms of the working class against the capitalist
class, and he absolutely refused to compromise with his chosen
enemy. When he became convinced that the AFL was simply
an auxiliary of "Mark Hanna's Qvic Federation," he became
abitter opponent of the AFL. But even so, this opposition was
qualified. Debs did not try to destroy the AFL, and he always
supported its strikes. He merely refused to join it, refused to try
to change it from within, refused to dirty his hands by contact
with Samuel Gompers' federation. As he commented in his letter
to the Social Democratic Herald: "I have simply joined a trade
union that suits me. That's all."
In several other instances, Debs chose a method that e f e t ~
his goal. Each of these mistakes stemmed from his habit of re-
garding every ql.J,estion as a "purely class question." Thus, even
though the Party could have gained members and spread its
doctrines by participation in several reform movements, Debs
always refused to co-operate with any reform party to achieve
a limited objective. In June, 1908, Henry Demarest IJoyd tried
to enlist Debs' support for a municipal ownership campaign in
Chicago. Debs replied that he did not believe "that single
taxers, socialists and antisocialist trade unionists can success-
fully harmonize upon any question whatsoever .... Experi-
ence has satisfied me of the futility' of such an undertaking,
however promising the prospect might seem. I have long since
determined to stick to the main issue and stay on the main
track, no matter how alluring some of the byways may appear."
Debs' attitude was fully supported by the Socialist Party, which
had an unqualified rule against any alliance, with nonsocialist
political parties. This policy caused the Party to miss many op-
portunities to educate workingmen outside its ranks, but the
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Party's attitude toward the Negro people was even more short-
sighted.
Many leaders of the Socialist Party, either consciously or un-
consciously, had ill-concealed prejudice toward Negroes. Thus,
in the Social Democratic Herald for May, 1 9 0 ~ Victor Berger
wrote: "There can be no doubt that the negroes and mulattoes
constitute a lower race-that the Caucasians and indeed even
the Mongolians have the start on them in civilization by many
thousand years-so that negroes will find it difficult ever to
overtake them." Berger's indictment of the "barbarous be-
havior of the American whites toward the negroes" would
scarcely have made his article palatable either to Negroes or
scientists.
Eugene Debs' attitude on this question was quite different.
His numerous organizing trips through the South had con-
vinced him that white workingmen would be exploited so long
as the Negroes were held in an inferior position. As early as
January, 1898, Debs ironically wrote from Montgomery, Ala-
bama: "It is no longer the pauper labor of Europe, but of the
United States that we need to be 'protected' against. Congress
should promptly erect a tariff barrier along Mason and Dixon's
line." On his lecture tours of the Southern states, many of which
were sponsored by branches of the AFL or of the YMCA, Debs
always refused to speak before segregated audiences. In several
cases he threatened to cancel engagements rather than yield to
local prejudice.
Debs' firm stand against racial prejudice was not solely due
to general good will. He was convinced that any racial or re-
ligious :livision was harmful to the entire labor movement. A
statement he made in 1908 helps to illuminate this attitude:
"The convention of the American Railway Union which resulted
in the great railroad strike of 1894, after a fierce and protracted
debate, turned down the Negro and this was one of the factors
in our defeat. The leaders of the opposition, as I remember them,
proved subsequently to have been traitors to the union, sent to
the convention, doubtless, at the instigation of the corporations
to defeat the unity of the working class."
When he did encounter discrimination against Negroes, Debs'
THE BENDING CROSS
wrath fairly boiled over. One day when he was carrying his two
heavy grips away from the railroad station in a small Southern
town, he passed ~ group of local loafers sitting along a rail fence.
A voice from the fence said, "There's a nigger that'll carry your
grips," and an accompanying hand pointed across the street.
A second fence-sitter observed, "That's what he's here for," and
a third, "That's right, by God." Debs described these philoso-
phers in the I ntemational Socialist Review: "They were ignorant,
lazy. unclean, totally void of ambition, themselves the foul
products of the capitalist system and held in the lowest con-
tempt by the master class, yet esteeming themselves immeasur-
ably above the cleanest, most intelligent and self-respecting
negro, having by reflex absorbed the 'nigger' hatred of their
masters."
Debs soon received, in answer to his article, an anonymous
letter, which predicted that the Socialists would "lose more votes
than you think" if they insisted on equality for the Negroes.
The letter was signed, "A stanch member of the Socialist
Party." Debs printed this advice in the International Socialist
~ i e w and furiously replied that the Party "would be false to
its historic mission, violate the fundamental principles of So-
cialism, deny its philosophy and repudiate its own teachings if,
on account of race considerations, it sought to exclude any
human being from political and economic freedom."
But Debs refused to concede that poor Negroes were in a
worse position than poor white people. When the Party con-
vention of 1903 resolved to make a special fight for the rights
of Negroes, Debs opposed the action. He expressed his "hope
that the convention may repeal the resolution on the Negro
question. The Negro does not need them and they serve to in-
crease rather than diminish the necessity for explanation." Debs
then argued: "We have nothing special to offer the Negro, and
we cannot make separate appeals to all the races. The Socialist
party is the party of the whole working class, regardless of color
-the whole working class of the whole world."
So the Socialist Party, immobilized by Berger's prejudice and
Debs' oversimplified analysis, failed to adopt a specialized prcr
gram for the Negro people. When race prejudice was thrust at
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
261
Debs, he always publicly repudiated it. He always insisted on
absolute equality. But he failed to accept the view that special
measures were sometimes needed to achieve this equality. Mter
Debs had decided that the main problem was the emancipation
of the workingmen, he refused to be concerned with lesser
problems, although he himself had argued that white workers
would never be free so long as Negroes were oppressed. .
Debs' beliefs on dual unionism, co-operation with reform
parties, and the problems of the Negro people, all flowed from a
common source. He was determined to hew to a revolutionary
program and not be diverted by reform movements. If his mind
failed to grasp a direct connection between a proposed reform
and socialism, he refused to waste time with the reform. Then
argument became futile; he could not be swayed. His basic con-
victions had been set in a steel mold by the teachings of his
father and Victor Hugo, and Debs never doubted them. This
gave rise to an almost mystical faith in the dictates of his inner
self. Always willing to concede his fallibility on minor issues, he
went his own way on basic policy. In each case he sought
justification in that most private of all places, his conscience.
Debs had supported his resignation from office in the Brother-
hood of Locomotive Firemen by saying: "I do not consider that
I have made any sacrifice whatever; no man does, unless he
violates his conscience." In the quarrel about his affiliation to
the IWW, he again said, ''1 would do anything but violate my
conscience. That 1 will not do and that you will not ask." His
conscience was the Great Umpire, and Debs was. the only
spectator near enough to hear the umpire's decisions.
CHAPTER XIV
[ 1 ]
F
OR sheer novelty and drama, the political show staged by
the Socialists in 1908 has few equals. The Party managers
proved that they had. originality, a quality rare in Ameri-
can politics. Scorning ambiguity and caution, the Socialists
candidly stated their beliefs and still remained two steps ahead
of the opposition. The resulting campaign was rich with humor,
with confident abandon, and, ultimately, with a touch of trag-
edy. Much of the interest aroSe from Eugene Debs' marathon
performance. He spoke from five to twenty times a day for
sixty-five consecutive days. This in itself was not a record-
William Jennings Bryan made six hundred speeches during his
campaign in 1896. But Debs in 1908 was fifty-two years old,
subject to rheumatism, lumbago, and chronic headaches, and
was widely rumored to be half dead. Also, Debs began his cam-
paign immediately after having finished an exhausting lecture
tour.
The campaign started ominously for the Socialists. It was
apparent that Bryan, the Boy Orator of the Platte, would be the
Democratic nominee. William Howard Taft was draped with
the personal endorsement and trust-busting mantle of Theodore
Roosevelt. Against these candidates, the Socialists could not
hope for many votes from the reformers. And the Socialists
could not agree among themselves about either platform or
candidates. Behind the Party's debonair face, two factions were
jockeying for place and power.
The top offices in the Party were largely held by professional
men. Moms Hillquit, Seymour Stedman, and Job Harriman
were lawyers. Victor Berger, Max Hayes, A. M. Simons, John
Spargo, Fred Heath, and John Work were all editors or writers.
These men wanted to base the Party on the craft unions and
the reform vote. But the Party's left wing, as represented by
262
Debs and Haywood, emphasized the problems of the unskilled,
unorganized workingmen and the poor farmers.
This basic cleavage about policy dominated the Socialist na-
tional convention, which opened in Chicago on May 10, 1908.
After brief and covert sparring, the convention adopted a plat-
form which bore the imprint of the left wing. The tone of the
entire document followed from its Marxist oPening: '"Human
life depends upon food, clothing and shelter. Only with these
assured -are freedom, culture and higher human development
possible." Eugene Debs, working at his desk in Girard, Kansas,
must have been gratified when the 1908 convention largely
copied the platform he had written in 1904.
The radical leaders did not relax after this initial victory.
Frank O'Hare. the young Socialist organizer who had worked
with Debs in the Moyer-Haywood defense campaign, heard
rumors that an attempt would be made to brush Debs aside as
the Presidential nominee. According to the rumor, Hillquit,
Berger, and J. Mahlon Barnes had perfected a deta,iled strategy
to accomplish this purpose. Although this charge seems im-
probable, certainly Debs' flirtation with the IWW had con-
vinced many leaders that he was unreliable. Also, both Berger
and Barnes had an egocentric approach to the Socialist Party.
No Socialist lecturer could enter Wisconsin until he had been
approved by the state committee of the Party, on which Berger
was the leading member. Barnes had been frequently accused
of expelling on trumped-up charges all dissident members of the
Pennsylvania organization. Whether these accusations were true
or not, they had earned the Triumviratt--Barnes, Berger, and
Hillquit-a reputation as petty conspirators.
The left wing promptly devised its own conspiracy to insure
Debs' nomination. One of their men was chosen as chairma.n of
the nominating session. He immediately recognized Phil Callery
of Missouri, who made a fiery, tub-thumping speech for Eugene
Debs. Then Seymour Stedman, the Socialist veteran from
Chicago, spoke for several minutes about the uncertain state of
Debs' health. He questioned that Debs could stand the rigors of
an energetic campaign. He pointed out that Debs had recently
undergone a throat operation. Finally he nominated A. M.
THE BENDING CROSS
Simons, who had just been deposed as editor of the Inkrrwtimwl
Socialist Review. Mter Frank O'Hare had seconded Debs' nomi-
nation, the floor was given to Ben Hanford, Debs' running mate
in 1904.
If there actually was a conspiracy to defeat Debs, Hanford
destroyed completely its chances for success. A few days earlier
Hanford had received a letter from Debs, and he now read this
letter to the convention: "My health is about all that could be
desired. So far as strength is concerned, I never had more to my
credit, if as much .. I have never refused to do, so far as I
was able, anything the party commanded me to do, and never
shall. I have taken the nomination under protest, but I have no
desire to run for office and a positive prejudice against the very
thought of holding office . My whole ambition-and I have
a goodly stock of it-is to make myself as big and as useful as
I can, as much opposed to the enemy and as much loved by our
comrades as any man in the ranks. You need have no fear that
I shall shirk my part in the coming campaign. I sha.ll be in
condition, and I hope there will be no good ground for com-
plaint when the fight is over."
A tremendous roar of support rose from the delegates as soon
as Hanford finished reading. A word from Debs had silenced all
fears about his health. Questioning eyes had turned toward
Stedman while Hanford was reading. When Hanford revealed
that Stedman had seen the letter at the beginning of the con-
vention, the questioning look changed to hostility. The rank
and -file delegate was convinced that a handful of inSiders,
guided by the Triumvirate, were trying to pull a fast one.
Several other names were offered in nomination, and Victor
Berger rightfully warned against forming a "one-man party,"
hut the result was already determined. Debs received 90 per
cent of the votes on the first balloL Then Ben Hanford, the hero
of the convention, was again nominated for Vice-President.
The convention had chosen the right man to head its ticket.
Few people bothered to distinguish between Eugene Debs and
the Socialist Party. Even the Terre Haute Tribune, a commer-
cial newspaper, called it "an honor" to the city that the S0-
cialists had nominated Debs. who was deemed outstanding for
AMERICAN SOCIALIS M
the "genuineness of his convictions, for his honesty, for his
ability, and for his charn:ringpersonality:' The Appeal to Retuon
printed a poem in which Debs p p ~ r e d as a modem Messiah:
r a 'Dote for Debs, for the Faith I ha'De
That we'll reach the promised land;
A joyous 'Dote and a splendid 'Dote, and
A clasp of a CQ1I13'ad.: 8 hand!
I'll rote for Debs for the Hope I hatve
Thatshallflood the world with its light!
And I mWlt answer the call I hear
That the work:ing class unite!
[ fd ]
~ Eugene Debs was in Girard, furiously grinding out
copy for the Appeal. In his letter to Hanford, he had said; ''In
the coming campaign, however, I would prefer, if I had my
choice, to see what I could do with my pen and give my tongue
a rest. I feel as if I can write a campaign and make some of the
enemy take notice that there are Socialists in the field." Debs'
resolution on this score proved vain; he could not stay in the
office. One day Fred Warren walked up to his desk and sug-
gested that they stroll down to the town sqila.re of Girard, where
a street carnival was being held. Debs -readily agreed; county
fairs were always a favorite with him. Although a huge crowd
had gathered around the town square, there was no carnival.
The attraction was a speech, with Debs as the featured speaker.
In his earlier years, Eugene Debs might have been thrown off
balance by a request for an impromptu speech. Julius Wayland
had written in 1898: "Mr. Debs is not an orator, nor can he be
said to be graceful, butl never saw an audience to follow a talker
with greater interest. He got the attention of the audience and
they remained as if spellbound." Art Young, the famous car-
toonist, was more critical of a speech about 1900 at the Academy
of Music in New York City: ''I was disappointed that night-
not by what he said, but by his manner. I thought him too
much like a school-boy elocutionist." Incessant practice had its
effect on Debs' rhetoric and by 1908 he was generally recognized
!l66 T-HE BENDING CROSS
as one of the great American orators. The content of his speeches
had captured control over the form, so that he could shuttle
easily from royal indignation to irony to a gentle humor.
On May 23, 1908, there on the town square of Girard, Debs
shouted to the farmers and small merchants that the rulers had
always ground the workingmen beneath an iron heel. Cruci-
fboon was the invariable reward of men who were generous aIid
saw a higher vision: "He who has dared to voice the protest of
the oppressed and downtrodden, has had to pay the penalty, all
the way from Jesus Christ to Fred Warren I am in revolt
against capitalism because I love my fellow men, and if I am
opposing you it is for what I believe to be your good, and though
you spat upon me with contempt I would still oppose you to
the extent of my power."
Debs made a bitter, slashing, angry attack on the Goulds
and the Rockefellers, because these meQ stood as a barrier
against the glorious vision he had seen. He pleaded with his
audience to stand with him on the mountain peak and gaze
down into the future: ''When we are in partnership and have
stopped clutching each other's throats, when we have stopped
enslaving each other, we will stand together, hands clasped, and
be friends. We will be comrades, we will be brothers, and we will
begin the march to the grandest civilizo.tion the human race has
ever known." .
With those words, Eugene Debs hurled himself into the Presi-
dential campaign. His desire to rest his tongue was hastily-for-
gotten; by the first of June he was speaking three or four times .a
day in New York City. Before the major parties had even nomi-
nated their candidates, Debs was striving to fulfill his injunction
to the Socialist convention: "The working class of the United
States must be aroused this year and made to feel the quicken-
ing pulse, the throbbing hope and the stern resolve of the social
revolution. . Duty to the cause transcends all else, and
touching elbows, and hearts keeping time to the quick steps of
the revolution, we march beneath the banner (no compromise)
to certain victory."
Debs' speeches in New York inspired scenes of exultation. At
one meeting a woman in the audience leaped to her feet and
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
261
screamed, "There he is. There he is. Gene Debs. Not the missing
link, but the living link between God and man." Such an inci-
dent was unusual but not unique; every speech by Debs tended
to become a catharsis for his listeners. He unconsciously created
an emotional tension was bound to into ecstasy.
He hurled his lean body back and forth across the platform
until his shirt was a sodden rag plastered to his body. He
crouched on the very edge of the platform, extended a gaunt
forefinger at the audience, and literally drew them into the
orbit of his mind. Each listener felt that Debs was talking to
him personally, that the two of them were simply having a
private and friendly talk. The atmosphere carried sincerity like
an electric charge; few men were able to doubt the strength and
the honesty of his sympathy for them. Even when the speech
was over, dozens of people followed Debs to his hotel room.
. crowding the corridor in the hope that they could shake hands
or exchange greetings. These men were personal admirers, not
the joh-seekers who customarily torment a Presidential can:di-
date. But, just as the job-seekers almost killed Lincoln, so the
admirers almost killed Debs. Seldom able to turn them away,
Debs carelessly sacrmced both sleep and regular meals. His only
complaint was made in a five-word note to Fred Warren: "My
Dear Warren: Strenuous? Whew I"
Debs' reputation rested in considerable measure upon his own
personality and his unquestioned contribution to the cause of
the workingmen. But there was also a Debs Legend, which the
Socialist propagandists had been cultivating for several years.
Radical ministers, journalists, and poets turned out literally
hundreds of pamphlets and articles about Eugene Debs. A few
of these efforts had real literary merit; some were confined to
the presentation of facts; but most of them were eulogies about
the greatness of Debs' soul. These incongruous mixtures of
religion and psychology found a sympathetic audience in the
Ame:dca of 1908. Every time a writer claimed that Debs "has a
great soul," "is the greatest lover of us all," or "is it true disciple
of Jesus Christ," the Socialist vote spurted upward.
These eulogists may be justly accused of mysticism, but they
cannot be called insincere. Almost everybody who met Eugene
168
THE BENDING CROSS
Debs had the same reaction. Scores of businessmen, who had
no sympathy with Debs' socialism, still observed: "Be's a great
man," or "I love him:' Heywood Broun later recorded a com-
ment on this subject by a "hard-bitten Socialist": "Gene Debs
is the only one who can get a way with the sentimental flummery
that's been tied onto Socialism in this country. Pretty nearly
always it gives me a swift pain to go around to meetings and
have people call me 'comrade.' That's a lot of bunk. But the
funny part of it is that when Debs says 'comrade' it's all right.
He means it. That old man with the burning eyes actually be-
lieves that there can be such a thing as the brotherhood of man.
And that's not the funniest part of it. As long as he's around I
believe it myself."
Debs' reputation was not the sole benefieiary from the inllUl:
of professional men after 1905. In that year the Intercollegiate
Socialist Society was founded, with Jack London as chairman.
to spread radicalism in the college communities. The Christian
Socialist Fellowship supplied a second gospel to hundreds of
pulpits. Socialist publications, with dozens of skilled journalists
competing for jobs, took a'leap forward. The New York Call
began publication in May, 1908. with money that had been
partially raised at Debs' lectures that month. Charles H. Kerr.
publisher of the left-wing I nt6T1Ultional Sociali8t Review, fired
A. M. Simons and assumed the editorship himself, with an an-
nouncement that his jonmal aimed to please workers rather
than college professors.
The Socialist election machinery was moving into high gear hy
early June. Then Mahlon Barnes. the campaign manager, in-
vented a new piece of machinery. Barnes walked into a meeting
of the National Committee and sheepishly said that he had an
idea. He knew it souIided silly, but it might work. When he
finished presenting the plan, his colleagues thought he was
crazy. They were. in fact, a little apprehensive about Barnes'
equilibrium; maybe he was getting to be as unreliable as Gene
Debs. But Barnes continued his argument, and finally the com-
mittee agreed to give the plan a trial. Barnes proposed that the
Party rent a locomotive and a sleeping car, load them with
literature, and let them carry Eugene Debs across the country
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
on a speaking tour. The train was immediately dubbed The
Red Special.
The obstacle which had halted Barnes and the National Com
mittee was the estimated expense-twenty thousand dollars.
The Socialist press and a corps of speakers began efforts to raise
this money by voluntary contributions, but Bill Haywood and
Eugene Debs acted as if the problem had to be solved by them
alone. Haywood had been frequently suggested as. the Presi-
dential nominee, but he had feared a split in the radical con-
tingent to the Chicago convention and had withdrawn in favor
of Debs. He now held a series of mammoth meetings in Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York; contributions poured
in from each meeting. Barnes' idea had instantly seized the
imagination of the Socialist rank and file. When Haywood
shouted at an audience: "Well, Comrades, do you want to see
Gene Debs and the Red Jimmie Higgins was actually
glad to empty the frayed pockets of his shiny black suit.
Eugene Debs. meanwhile, was visiting the Socialist encamp-
ments of the Southwestern states. Frank O'Hare, Oscar Arne-
ringer, and Otto Branstetter, all natives of the region, had de-
vised an institution that was perfectly suited to their purpose.
The poor farmers. of the Southwest, living miles from their
closest neighbor. walled off by continuous drudgery and the
difficulties of travel, were starved for any sort of recreation.
O'Hare conceived the notion of annual encampments, sponsored
by the Socialist Party, which would be a combined square-dance
fest, socialist and revival meeting. Then Ameringer per-
suaded local merchants to finance the encampments by saying
that it would bring them new business. The Socialist encamp-
ments aroused the same wild enthusiasm that had been aroused
by the announcement of the Red Special. By 1908, scores of
thousands of fariners were spending their annual vacations at
these temporary tent colonies.
Debs spoke at several of these camps during early July. In
every case the scene was precisely the same. One evening there
were two or three organizers alone in a grove of trees near a
small creek. The next morning a steady stream of wagons came
into view across the prairie, a red flag waving from each whip-
socket. Debs thought this was one of the greatest sights in the
world-uneducated, poverty-stricken men who had brought
their families fifty or a hundred miles in search of good talk and a
little company. These men deserved the best he could give, and
Debs spoke for hours while the sweat streamed down across his
face. ,On July 4, he spoke at the picnic grounds in Coalgate,
Oklahoma, to five thousand people. That night he wrote to
Fred Warren: "thousands and thousands-woods full of 'em,
all blazing with zeal for socialism." The next day he was in
Oklahoma City, talking -to three thousand spectators: What
can we promise your Ostracism and persecution. We can promise
you more. We can promise you victory in the interest of the
human race." Men threw their dirty hats in the air, repeated
phrases to themselves, threw their small coins into the blanket.
One of them wrote in to the Appeal: "With the exception of the
great Lincoln, where can we find the like of this manr"
Sometimes an elderly farmer would come out of the crowd
yelling, "Gene, Gene. don't you remember me any morer"
Many of these farmers were old-time members of the ARU who
had been blacklisted and driven off the railways after the Pull-
man boycott. Debs always remembered them, "threw his long
arms around them, pressed them to his heart until their eyes
moistened in love and gratitude to the leader who had lost them
their strike, their job and their home," as Oscar Ameringer
wrote. Eugene Debs always felt a special kinship to the ARU
veterans. One morning Dan Hogan, the chairman of the Party
in Arkansas, paid Debs the usual fee of a hundred dollars for
speaking at an encampment and then went with him to the
railroad station. A woman was waiting for Debs on the plat-
form. When ~ h explained that she was the widow of an ARU
striker, Debs guided her away from Hogan. Debs talked with
the womall for several minutes, then bade her good-by and
walked back to Hogan with the request: "Dan. will you lend me
five bucks to pay my fare to Girardr" '
By July 12 Debs was in Milwaukee, speaking to twenty-five
thousand persons who paid admission to a Socialist picnic.
Mingling with the audience was the celebrated journalist,
Lincoln Steffens, who was writing a series of articles about the
..
Presidential candidates. Steffens was deeply impressed by the
way that Debs crouched when he was speaking. the way his
hands reached out and the sweat dripped fr<;>m' his chin and
forehead, the way the speech was "smooth. correct and truly
eloquent." But Steffens. like other reporters, became mystical
in trying to explain the sourCe of Debs' appeal: "It wasn't art
that kept that Milwaukee crowd steaming out there in the sun
and, at the close, drew it crushing down upon the orator. And
it wasn't what he said. either; too much of the gratitude was
expressed in foreign tongues. It was the feeling he conveys that
he feels for his fellow men; as he does, desperately."
When Eugene Debs had finally escaped from his admirers, he
was interviewed by Steffens at Victor Berger's home. The
startling similarities and contrasts among these three men all
emerged in the course of the interview. Steffens' amused eyes
and devilish Van Dyke gave the precise impression of what lay
inside his mind-a detailed acquaintance with corruption and
violence had never shaken his faith that all men were really
good men. Debs, gaunt, volatile, apostolic. expressed himself
passionately on every point that Steffens raised. Berger was
cautious, ponderous, scholarly, with carefully prepared opinions
on every issue. It was appropriate that Steffens should','ask the
questions; the other two men had absolute faith in their own
answers.
Steffens, with his usual bluntness, observed that Debs seemed
ill-fitted to be President. Debs admitted it freely: "When So-
cialism is on the verge of success, the party will nominate an
able executive and a clear-headed admiDistrator; not-not
Debs!' The three-time candidate then explained that the Party
had no hope of winning in 1908. It was in the race purely to
educate the workingmen, and it did not want a single vote that
was not a'vote for socialism. Berger listened passively to these
preliminaries; the real fun began when Steffens started asking
about the Socialist program. Debs and Berger gave different
answers. When Steffens asked how the Socialists would con-
fiscate the trusts if they came to power, Debs replied tersely,
"Take them." This statement brought Berger protesting from
his chair: "No. No, you wouldn't. Not if I was there. And you.
27i
THE BENDING CROSS
shall not say it for the party. It is my party as much as it is
your party, and I answer that we would offer to pay."
Before the day ended, Steffens had raised most of the objec-
tions usually made to socialism: It is visionary; it won't really
solve anything; the workingmen will become lazy. And, in spite
of Berger's attempts at censorship, Debs answered them all
freely. The journalist must have been satisfied; his article in
Everybody's Magazine was friendly to Debs. Just before the
election, Steffens publicly announced his support of the Socialist
nominee. His reasons were explained in his letter to Brand Whit-
lock, the mayor of Toledo: "And Brand, vote for Debs. Don't
try to decide the election; don't choose between the two evils.
Vote for that sweet, good, passionate lover of mankind who
offers hope and service, and leave the rest to God and the res.t
of us." Steffens wrote to his sister that he would vote for Debs
"as a protest and as an encouragement to the third party idea.
I couldn't vote for either of the other parties; their candidates
are good men, but blind."
Early in August, Debs was back at his desk in Girard, writing
fervent appeals for contributions to the campaign fund. Three
weeks later, six thousand dollars had been raised for the pro-
posed uip, and J. Mahlon Barnes signed a conuact with the
railroad for the first half of the tour. The Red Special would
leave Chicago on August 81, proceed to southern California,
make its way up the coast to Washington, and return to Chicago
on September 25. Every night a meeting would be held in a
large city, and the uain would stop briefly at small towns along
the route.
The major parties were first astonished, then worried, by the
success of the Socialist plans. Theodore Roosevel t, more than
three years earlier, had written to a friend: "The growth of the
socialistic party . . . [is] far more ominous than any populist
or similar movement in times past." The fund raised by the
Socialists in 1908 was even more "ominous"; it really seemed
that radicalism was taking root in America. Desperation, largely
unwarranted, crept into the campaign to ''Stop Debs." Sup-
porters of Taft and Bryan aimed blow after blow at the So-
cialists, but the Party managers were difficult men to hit. A
good referee would have awarded them every round.
The first anti-Socialist broadside was fired by Samuel Gompers,
who charged that the Republican Party was secretly financing
the Red Special. J. Mahlon Barnes immediately made public
every contribution to the Socialist treasury. There were few
donations larger than ten dollars; the largest was two hundred.
Debs added that he was opposed to all capitalists, whether
Republican or Democratic, and that the Socialists got their
money from men who believed in socialism. Perhaps by this
time Gompers regretted having opened his mouth, but the
Social Democratic Herald fired an even more pointed jibe on
September 19: "Sam Gompers is trying to line up the labor
fakirs for Bryan. But their enthusiasm does not last longer than
the effect of the whiskey which produces it." The laugh was now
on Gompers, whose appreciation of good bourbon was no secret
in the labor movement.
Before the flurry against Gompers had subsided, several
newspapers charged that the Socialist Party was a "foreign"
organization. Barnes again answered by opening his books. He
replied that more than 70 per cent of the forty thousand Social-
ists had been born in the United States, and another !!O per
cent were immigrants from western Europe. The Socialist Party
based its views on the writings of Karl Marx, who was German.
But Marxism was a scientific analysis which applied to any
capitalist society, said the socialists. Was mathematics a purely
uAmerican" science? they asked.
Although the Socialists continued to do a creditable job of
refuting the charges made against them, their answers had little
effect. The enemy's attacks were front-page news in the metro-
politan dailies; the Socialist replies were often suppressed or
buried on an inside page. The parties that controlled the news-
papers could, to a great extent, control public opinion, and the
Socialists were ill-equipped to compete with their opponents.
Several major newspapers printed articles that were fair or even
partial to Debs; but for the most part the Socialists were forced
to rely on their own press, leaflets, and stump speakers.
This obvious handicap did not discourage Eugene Debs. On a
brief tour through the corn states in late August, Debs found the
same enthusiasm that he had noted six weeks earlier in the
Southwest. His elation at this discovery is apparent from his let-
THE BENDING CROSS
ter to a colleague: ''The meetings out here are big as all out-
doors and red hot with enthusiasm. Ye Gods! But these are
pregnant days! The hosts pour in from all directions-men,
women, children and babies, and all of them, including the
babies, are up in arms against the capitalist system. The farmers
out here, thousands of them, are revolutionary to the core and
ripe and ready for action. Socialists are nearly as thick out here,
and quite as strictly strenuous, as the grasshoppers used to be.
The plutes will need a doctor and the preacher when the votes
are counted. The 'Red Special' is trump. The people are wild
about it and the road will be lined with the cheering hosts of
the proletarian revolution."
3 J
DEBS went to Chicago on August 30 and boarded the Red
Special for the first lap of his campaign. The sleeping car con-
tained berths for Debs and his brother Theodore, for Stephen
Reynolds, and for Harry Parker, who had charge of the train.
Reynolds had just finished his campaign biography of the S0-
cialist candidate, and his reward was a bunk on the Red Special.
The walls of the coach were lined with huge stacks of literature.
crowned by cardboard cartons of the bright red Socialist but-
tons. Other pamphlets and buttons, together with hundreds of
the huge ''Debs and Hanford" posters, had been shipped ahead
to points along the route. Arrangements had been made to pick
up the local Party leaders in every state, so that they could
introduce Debs in their home localities. Every detail had been
worked out carefully. Painfully aware that they were spending a
hard-earned twenty thousand dollars, the Socialist managers
wanted to make every cent of it pay.
This worried planning contrasted strongly with the mood of
Jimmie Higgins. The huge crowd which gathered in Chicago's
station on August 30 was shouting, laughing, gaily waving red
the standard-bearer. The atmosphere was alive with
hope; even the conservative Berger had predicted one and a
half million votes for Debs and Hanford. This jubilation was
shared by the occupants of the train. They all flaunted their
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
~ 7
red lapel buttons, and Steve Reynolds even pinned his button
to his pajamas every night. If he should die in his sleep, he ex-
plained, he wanted everybody to know that he "wasn't a Re-
publican." The Red Special, moving with the jaunty air of a
playboy, left Chicago that evening and headed west.
The Socialist candidate quickly revealed the tactics of his
campaign. Two days later in Des Moines, he charged that the
Republicans were tied hand and foot to Wall Street. William
Howard Taft, said Debs, had been issuing antilabor injunctions
for fifteen years. As for Bryan, his claim to represent both
workers and employers was held up to ridicule. Such a feat,
joked Debs, was just as impossible as it would be "to ride two
horses at the same time, going in opposite directions."
A woman reporter from the Des Moines News boarded the
train early the next morning to interview Debs. He received her
in the best of spirits, even though he had not yet dressed for the
day. Sitting on the arm of a seat, in his shirt-sleeves and without
a collar, he answered all questions about the trip. Finally the
reporter asked when the Socialists would elect a President, and
Debs promptly replied that "in ten years they will at least be
crowding the capitalists."
Eugene Debs was having th e time of his life as the train moved
across the prairies. Every day he met some old friend whom he
had not seen for years. In Muscatine, Iowa, he was hailed by a
man with whom he had worked on the Vandalia Milroad thirty-
five years earlier. Debs immediately threw his arms around his
former companion, and the train was delayed while they ex-
changed gossip and good will Dozens of ARU veterans pre-
sented themselves at the platform of the Red Special; one of
them produced his membership card in the dead organization
and commented that he "would rather have that than a king's
ransom." The events held humor as well as devotion. In Corn-
ing, Iowa, a woman snorted derisively "Did you take one of
them things?" to a man who Jteld a Socialist pamphlet. The man
shuffied his feet self-consciously, crammed the pamphlet hast-
ily into a pocket of his overalls, then glared back at his tor-
menter.
In Omaha the train was decorated with red bunting by the
!l76
THE BENDING CROSS
local Socialists. Red streamers floated from the roof, from the
wheels, from the rear platform. As the Red Special hurtled
across the prairies toward the West Coast, oncoming trains
could identify it for miles. Flags and bandannas were waved
from coach windows as the trains passed. Sympathetic engineers
blew long, shrill blasts on their locomotive whistles. The tracks
were lined with buggies which had come for miles; often the
spectators crowded f o r w ~ and forced the train to halt. Then
Steve Reynolds and Theodore would circle through the crowd
selling literature while Debs gave a brief talk from the ob-
servation platform. When the train moved on. it left old grizzled
farmers gazing after it, scratching their heads and muttering.
"By God, he's right."
The meetings in Colorado were large-five thousand in Den-
ver and two thousand at an open-air gathering in Leadville--
but these were dwarfed by the crowds in California. When the
Red Special arrived in Santa Barbara at four o'clock in the
morning, a huge throng of Socialists waited in the railroad yards.
Debs genially roned out of his berth and went out on the plat-
form in his nightshirt to give a brief talk. In San Diego, fifteen
thousand persons paid their way into an open-air speech. and
Spring Stadium in Los Angeles was jammed on September 9 .
. The crowd was never disappointed; Debs was first-rate.
whether he gave a prepared speech or had a rough-and-tumble
scrap with hecklers in the audience. His meetings were often
graced by several disrupters, but he was never flustered. One
night a man in the front of the han shouted that anybody who
voted for socialism was throwing his vote away, and Debs flared
back: "You argue that you are throwing your vote away. That's
right. Don't vote for freedom-you might not get it. Vote for
slavery-you have a cinch on that." Or there was the prosper-
ous gentleman who angrily accused Debs of demagogy, and the
speaker softly inquired: "If there are no classes, how can I array
them against one another?"
When Debs arrived in Spokane, three thousand persons were
waiting at the station. and an even larger number paid from
fifteen to twenty-five cents to hear his speech. The crowd was
entranced by his vigor and his spirit, but Eugene Debs was
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
scarcely his normal self. He had given thirty long orations and
more than a hundred brief ones in the previous two weeks. As
far back as Kansas City, he had begun locking himself on the
train and refusing to see anybody; then the appearance of some
old friend always shattered the resolution. Theodore and Reyn-
olds often tried to eliminate the need for a short speech by
playing the M aTseiUais8 to a crowd of farmers along the track.
But the strains of the French anthem only made the farmers
more determined to hear Debs, so the practice was quickly
abandoned.
From that time on, Debs had spoken to every crowd that
wanted to hear a speech. He was now so weary that he could
hardly crawl out of his berth, and the sound of his voice had
scarcely died out before he was back in bed. His throat felt raw
and tired; a metal band seemed to be tightening across his
forehead. Day after endless day, Debs drove himself out on the
rear platform to smile and wave at the adoring hundreds, to tell
them that man could be better than he was. But the time finally
arrived when he just could not stand the pace. It became obvious
tha t Debs would never finish the trip unless he conserved his
energy. So Reynolds and Theodore worked out a trick. Theodore
wa.s almost a dead ringer for his brother, except that he was
nine years younger. When a crowd in a station yard at night
began to shout for Debs, Theodore turned up his coat collar,
pulled down his hat brim, and stepped onto the back platform.
Reynolds hastily announced that "Comrade Debs is quite tired;
we are now behind schedule; we have a very important meeting
in the next town; Comrade Debs will not speak." Then Theo-
dore quickly stepped back into the coach.
A few days of this favored treatment gave Debs a chance to
partially regain his strength. The accustomed :fire came back
into Debs' voice as he repeated, in town after town, the speech
he had given four months earlier in Girard. At Billings, Mon
tana, he ate a tremendous steak dinner, then strode through the
clear autumn air to the public library and addressed three
thousand from the steps: "Our conduct is largely determined by
our economic relations. If you and I must fight each other to
exist, we will not love each other very hard." And in St. Paul
THE BENDING CROSS
he jestingly told another six thousand people: "'Competition
was natural and constructive once, but do you think you are
competing today? Many of you think you are. Against whom?
Against Rockefeller? About as I would i,f I had a wheelbarrow
and competed with the Sante Fe from here to Kansas City."
The Socialist candidate was still leaning heavily upon Theo-
dore. Acting as stand-in for his brother was the smallest part
of Theodore's job. He arranged for hotel rooms, fended off the
adoring Socialists, saw that Debs did nothing but let words
come from his tiring throat. Even more important, Theodore
took the main responsibility for answering the heavy flow of
correspondence. Most of the letters moved<through Theodore's
typewriter, Debs himself did not even see many of them. Eugene
had never learned to use a typewriter because, as he said, "A
machine is too cold"; but he occasionally wrote a brief note in
his forceful handwriting.
As his train rolled across Minnesota, Debs finally read Lincoln
Steffens' article in Everybody' 8 Magazine: "Eugene V. Debs on
What the Matter Is and What to Do about It." He excitedly
read portions of it aloud to his companions, and his face flushed
with pleasure at the tone with which Steffens reported their
interview. Debs admired Steffens' writing as much as Steffens
had admired Debs' oratory. When he had finished the article,
Debs wrote a brief note to the author: "You have written from
and been inspired by a social brain, a social heart and a social
conscience and if you are not a socialist I do not know one."
The arrangements foJ' the trip had been amazingly thorough.
With the foresight born of practice, the Party managers had
accurately estimated the literature sales, so that a steady stream
of leaflets had been delivered to the Red Special for sale to the
workingmen and farmers. Thousands of copies of Reynolds'
biography of Debs, with a rising sun printed in gold on the red
cover, had been sold since the train left Chicago. But the very
success of the literature sales and collection speeches had cre-
ated an unexpected problem. The Red Special was now carrying
twenty-one hundred dollars in small change. In Duluth this
money was loaded in cloth sacks and carried into the city for
deposit in a bank. Two men spent the entire day carrying those
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
~ 9
sacks of money from bank to bank, but not a single commercial
house in Duluth was willing to accept a deposit by the Socialist
Party. So the two men carried their sacks of money back to the
train. They were completely exhausted. The sacks held nineteen
thousand different coins, and weighed more than two hundred
pounds. When they told the sad story of their adventure, Debs
laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks.
That night a group of ARU veterans from Two Harbors
journeyed the forty miles to Duluth to hear their old leader
Gene Debs. After the speech they held an all-night celebration
in Debs' hotel room. Tired as he was, the Socialist candidate
was the most hilarious member of the party.
When the Red Special passed through Chicago on September
25, ending its western tour, it had travelled nine thousand miles
and made a hundred and ninety stops. Debs had spoken to two
hundred and seventy-five thousand persons in less than a;
month.
The metropolitan newspapers were still laying down a relent-
less barrage against the Socialists. The opposing parties had ac-
cused Debs o.f belittling the national flag, and he flared back
that "the national flag has been polluted by the plutocracy who
have used it to shield themselves in their evil doing. It is not
at present the flag of the patriot but has become the flag of
predatory wealth. in its exploitation of the working class and its
ravages upon the people generally. This is the only objection
the Socialists have ever urged against the colors of the United
States, and in this position they have the indorsement of every
true patriot in the land:'
The attacks on Debs' patriotism were soon dwarfed by the
attacks on his honesty. When his train reached Detroit, the local
Free Press ran a screaming headline:
Debs, in Luxury,
Ignores Crowd
Sleeps in Magnificent Palace Car
While Followers Wait
in Vain
Flunkies Guard Leader
From the Common Herd
THE BENDING CROSS
Several trade-union papers tried to counteract the stories in the
commercial press. The Journal of the Railroad Switchmen, say-
ing that Debs was "loved by his fellowmen because of his
honesty, for his many sacrices to the cause of humanity,"
called upon all switchmen to "Cast a UNION ballot for UNION
men" by voting for Debs and Hanford. The Miners' Magazine.
published by the Western Federation of Miners, commented on
Stanford University's act in closing its chapel to a speech by
Debs: "Ii is doubtful if Christ returned to earth and preached
the same doctrines that He proclaimed nineteen hundred years
ago that He would have been admitted to the chapel of Stan ..
ford University." But these articles in the labor and radical
press were like a small boy blowing into the face of a mighty
wind. The enemy carried the power.
The Socialist meetings were characterized by a long line of
children, waiting to present Debs with bouquets of red roses and
each received a kiss in return. Debs always delayed his speech
in order to have a p r i v ~ talk with the junior Socialists. In one
small town, a group of school children had long planned to be
down at the tracks when the Red Special passed. but the train
was running ahead of schedule and threatened to pass through
their town before they were dismissed from schooL When Debs
heard of this from local Socialists on the train, he insisted that
they should stop and wait .. At last. the children came running
headlong down to the tracks, and Debs sat on the back platform
and talked to them. He explained that some children in the big
cities had never seen a blade of grass or a cow. He told about
children in the coal and textile towns who were sent to work at
the age of nine or ten years. The men on the Red Special. he
said, wanted to win a new chance for all children.
The gigantic wave of the Socialist campaign drew thousands
of men into torchlight parades, open-air meetings, screaming,
hysterical receptions for the Red Special. When Debs marched
through Toledo, Mayor Brand Whitlock strode by his side; and
that evening Congressman Isaac R. Sherwood applauded Debs'
attack on the capitalist system. Five thousand people crowded
Convention Hall in Rochester to hear Debs say: "The capitalist
refers to you as mill hands, farm hands, factory hands, machine
hands-hands, hands! . A capitalist would feel insulted if
you called him a hand. He's a head. The trouble is he owns his
head and your hands."
New York City furnished the grand climax of the campaign.
When the Red Special pulled into Grand Central Station, the
crowd jammed the platform trying to get a glimpse of the S0-
cialist candidate. People were knocked down, trampled u n e ~
foot, a few were injured. Debs came out on the observation
platform and vainly tried to calm the shouting, cheering mass.
Realizing. that it was hopeless, he left the station by a rear door
and made a wide detour to reach his room at the Grand Union
Hotel The next day he spoke twice, at the American Theatre
~ at the Hippodrome. Ten days in advance the ten thousand
tickets to the Hippodrome were sold out, and that evening
they were being sold for five dollars each on the sidewalk in front
of the hall. When Debs appeared on the stage, the audience
cheered for fifteen minutes, weeping, laughing, filling the air
with red flags. The New York Time8 called it the greatest politi-
cal meeting ever held in the city. But the final word was left
, for Joshua Wanhope, the Socialist leader and ex-sailor. Wanhope
looked at the crowd, then drily commented, "If Roosevelt were
here 1 believe he would remark, with o.mazement, upon the
astonishing increase of 'undesirable citizens""
The following day Debs invaded the tenement district on the
lower East Side of Manhattan, where Morris Hillquit was
locked in a bitter campaign for Congress. The district had been
filled for months with hordes of young Socialists, who passed
out literature and gave hundreds of street-corner speeches. But
Debs' appearance marked the "red-letter day of the campaign,"
according to Hillquit. Ernest Poole, the novelist, left his own
record of Debs' laborious progress through the tenement section:
"I stood near him for hours one night on a truck that slowly
plowed its way through a roaring ocean of people as far as the
eye could see, all up and down dark tenement streets. No loud-
speakers. no brass bands. The truck stopped and Debs leaned
out with both arms raised, smiling over the roaring crowd. Still-
ness came. And then only his voice was heard-a voice that
could do with a crowd what it willed, not because of the mind
THE BENDING CROSS
he hind it but because of the great warm heart which the crowd
felt speaking there .... I listened to him, tingling deep. What
could I myself do for the cause?"
On Sunday afternoon, October 11, Debs addressed two meet-
ings in Philadelphia, and that night a third in Camden. When
he finished the Camden address he was exhausted and cold with
sweat. But he was immediately hurried into an open car and
driven to the ferry for the forty-minute trip back to Phila-
delphia. During the night he was seized by a violent chill, which
developed into the grippe. Debs missed his Monday speech in
Newark, but no more than that. None of his other audiences
guessed that he had been ill. He certainly seemed :well to a
Pittsburgh reporter, who went to a meeting intending to ridicule
the Socialist candidate. The city editor deleted the sections most
favorable to the speaker, but the remainder still read: "With
his bursts of oratorical splendor and flowery panegyric, Debs
lifted his hearers out of themselves and was compelled to stop
for minutes at a time because of the rounds of deafening ap-
plause."
The Red Special halted in Harper's Ferry so that Debs could
visit the memorial to John Brown. After he had spent several
minutes gazing at this monument to his idol, Debs issued a
statement to the press: "The Socialist Party is .carrying on the
work begun by John Brown."
As his train rolled back into the Midwest, huge crowds
gathered to hear his speeches. William Howard Taft had barely
filled the Music Hall in his own city of Cincinnati, but Debs'
meeting in the same hall was forced to turn people away. When
Taft spoke, admission was free; it cost a dime minimum to hear
Debs. The two candidates spoke on the same night in Evans-
ville, and again more persons paid to hear the Socialist than
went free to hear the Republican. Debs' managers, giddy with
success, decided to press their advantage. They offered to let
Taft address the Socialist rally for twenty minutes if Debs were
accorded similar rights at the Republican rally. The offer was
rejected.
On October 23, Debs gave seventeen speeches as he went
across Illinois. One of them seemed like a triumphant home-
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
coming. In Woodstock, Dlinois, the Socialist spoke to five hun-
dred people from the steps of the jail. Then he had a long chat
with George Eckert, the sheriff who had once been his jailer,
and showed his companions the cell in which he had been con-
fined for six months.
When Debs gave his last Red Special speech at the University
of Wisconsin, the St. Louis MiN"OT predicted that he would get
one and a half million votes and that the 1912 election would be
a clear-cut contest between capitalism and socialism. The five
hundred thousand people to whom Debs had spoken had pro-
vided fifty thousand new subscribers for the Appeal to Re08on.
Bill Haywood joined the Red Special in Chicago, where he
and Debs, on November 3, marched at the head of a parade of
fourteen thousand workingmen. The long, swaying file extended
more than two miles. An estimated sixteen thousand spectators
heard Debs' address in the Seventh Regiment Armory. Not
since 1895, when Debs was released from Woodstock, had the
Windy City seen such a political meeting. Every hand seemed
to be holding the red-and-gold jacket of Eugene V. Debs: His
Life, Writings, and Speechu, by Stephen M. Reynolds. The air
was alive with jerking flags, hats, canes, and fierce optimism.
Debs, his body racked with fatigue, scraped together the energy
for a fiery speech.
At that point, Debs had been moving on sheer determination
for two months. Since Camden he had been suffering from the
grippe. He had kept laughing and talking, refusing to let him-
self quit. But the day had arrived when determination was no
longer enough. As Debs spoke in Terre Haute on the last day
of the campaign, his voice was so weak that he could scarcely
be heard. The president of the local district of the United Mine
Workers, who had a huge, booming voice, easily overshadowed
Debs' performance at that final rally. But the Socialist enthu-
siasm was unshaken in Terre Haute. Debs' appearance at biB
polling place, the Friendly Inn, was the signal for several men
to crowd around him and grip his hand.
Debs sat quietly at home with Kate and Theodore to wait
for the results. When the count was complete, it proved very
disappointing to the Socialists. Their vote was 4!lO,973; it had
THE BENDING CROSS
not changed since 1904. Bryan's attacks on monopoly had won
the reform vote. The upswing from the depression of 1907 had
given the Republicans a chance to pose as the party of pros-
perity. The F I ~ leaders had influenced a large portion of the
labor movement, and the big newspapers had influenced every-
body. It was more difficult to win an election than the Socialists
had thought.
A strange occurrence in Terre Haute also cast light on the
reasons for the disappointing Socialist vote. Debs did not "get'a
single vote in his own precinct, although he knew of several
supporters, including himseU, who had voted there. He hastily
said that the error probably was caused by defects in the voting
Jlj.achines, which had been used for the first time. Debs' ex-
planation of the local results may have been accurate, but it
seems likely that several metropolitan cliques had deliberately
miscounted the Socialist vote.
The Appeal to Reason refused to be staggered by the outcome.
Its headline comment was: "Taft is elected; Bryan defeated;
Debs victorious." Katherine Debs had reason to think: other-
wise-her husband was dreadfully ill for a month after the
election. By the year's end, the Appeal itself might have doubted
its brazen assertion; its paid subscription list had again fallen
to the normal three hundred and ten thousand readers a week.
Probably the man least discouraged was the Socialist candi-
date. Before the votes had even been counted, he issued a press
statement: "The campaign is ended, and my very first thought
is of the kindness shown me and the loyal support given me in
every part of the country. While at times the exactions were
trying, I was sustained every hour by the loving care and un-
flagging support of comrades. To me this was the most beautiful
and satisfying feature of the campaign. It expressed the true
spirit of Socialist comradeship, which is the making of our
movement, and which will sustain it through every ordeal until
it is finally triumphant."
CHAPTER XV
[ 1 ]
A
THE END of the Red Special campaign, Eugene Debs
was exhausted. Rheumatism and lumbago plagued him
as old and serious afflictions. Vicious headaches had
recUlTed continually since the sunstroke ten years earlier in
West Virginia. Recognizing that her husband could no longer
shrug off these complaints. Kate urged him to take a long rest.
Debs, with rare exercise of common sense, actually avoided the
lecture platform for nearly a year, but he made numerous short
trips and wrote three or four articles each week for the Appeal
to Reaaon.
Early in 1907, when Debs first joined the staff of the Ap-
peal, Wayland and Warren asked him to move to Girard, Kan-
sas, where the weekly was located. Debs refused because, as he
said: "I can't make up my mind to leave Terre Haute. It has
always been my home. I was born here and my father and
mother are both buried here. No, I shall never leave Terre
Haute. It shall always be home to me, even if my work will not
permit staying at home as much as I should like to."
Debs did, however. maintain a room in a Girard hotel, and he
spent much of his time in the small Kansas town. Although his
only intimates there were the employees of the Appeal, he was
soon well known to the local citizens. In Girard as in Terre
Haute, Debs quickly gained a following among the children.
When he tired of working at his desk or in his hotel room, he
strolled down to the public square tositin the sun. Inevitably, a
crowd of young children soon gathered around him. One day
Fred Warren found him there, acting as sponsor and judge of a
jumping contest. Debs had offered a quarter to the best broad
jumper, and the competition was keen. Warren was forced to
wait until the prize had been awarded; then he and Debs walked
over to Debs' room at the OsbOrn House. Their conversation
285
THE BENDING CROSS
was soon interrupted by a timid knock. The intruder was a
young boy, who had arrived at the public square immediately
alter the close of Debs' competition. Not wanting to miss a
second the boy anxiously inquired: "Mr. Debs, when
are you going to have another jumping contest?"
Debs soon became almost a member of the family to most of
the Appeal's staff. One evening at dinnertime he walked into the
Warren's kitchen with a huge package under his ann. Ordering
Mrs. Warren into the living room, he prepared a dinner of beef-
steak and biscuits. The three Warren boys howled with laughter
when Debs brought the meal into the dining room. He was still
wearing his gray trousers and vest,.but he had removed his
coat, rolled up his sleeves, and was wearing one of their mother's
dainty aprons. Mter dinner Debs spent more than an hour tell-
ing stories and playing jokes, with himself as the usual scape-
goat. These tactics quickly established him as a prime favorite
in the house. Fred Warren once returned from the office to find
his son Carl, then eight years old, sitting quietly and gazing
into space. When Warren asked the cause of this unusual pre-
occupation, Carl replied that he was wishing Mr. Debs was his
father. Warren was not upset; he understand Carl's wish.
When he was with his friends in Girard, Debs often joked
about the unfortunate plight of the people who lived in cities.
Decades of travel had not lessened his dislike for urban life;
they had, in fact, strengthened it. Chicago, for Eugene Debs,
was .. that great madhouse I escaped from!' He said that his
only happy time in the Windy City "was when they locked me
up." And he made at least one cruel jest about the wretchedness
of city dwellers: "They are strangers, not because they don't
know each other, but because they do!'
The Socialist leader slipped naturally into the folkways of
Girard, where even the cobblestones seemed curved to fit his
feet. Southeaslnn Kansas, the center of the Bible Belt and the
prohibition movement, proved congenial ground to a man who
scorned religion and charged the prohibitionist "fanatics" with
spreading a "gospel of gloom." There was actually nothing
strange in this apparent contradiction. Debs' attitudes toward
both religion and prohibition stemmed from one conviction:
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
287
each man should be free to go his own way. Nor was Debs vitally
interested in either of these issues. AB in the case of municipal
ownership or the problems of Negroes, he tended to regard them
as secondary problems overshadowed by the campaign for
socialism.
In spite of his dislike for the organized church, Debs was
never a militant atheist. His few references to religion were
concerned with the political activities of specific min-
isters and priests, or with secta.rian divisions in the trade unions.
On the Great Plains he was among a deeply religious folk. But
they had not enroned in the legions of Christian pacifism. Far
from it. They had enrolled Jesus in the legions of social justice.
This view was accepted completely by Eugene Debs, who sel-
dom troubled to seek out the original source. He had learned
about Marxism from the popularizers of Karl Marx. Similarly
he learned about Christianity from the tent preachers of the
Midwest.
In March, 1914, on the very eve of the European war, Debs
referred to Jesus of Nazareth as the master proletarian revolu-
tionist and sower of the whirlwind." He denied the di-
vinity of Jesus, but lauded-Him as "the grandest and loftiest of
human souls--as real, as palpitant, and as pervasive as a historic
character as John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and Karl Marx."
The Prince of Peace, in Debs' opinion, "was of the working class
and loyal to it in every drop of his hot blood to the very hour
of his death. He hated and denounced the rich and cruel ex-
ploiter as passionately as he loved and sympathized with his
poor and suffering victims."
This interpretation of Christianity was heartily endorsed by
the Socialists of the Southwest. Regarding liquor as well, Debs'
viewpoint was not unpopular. His reputation as a heavy drinker
was based on a few isolated cases, which had been blown into a
spectacular portion of the Debs Legend. He had learned to use
wine because of his French ancestry, and whiskey because most
trade unions met in saloons during the early days. But liquor
had never become either a necessity or a habit. During the six
years that Debs worked for the Appeal, Fred Warren never saw
him take a drink.
iSS
THE BENDING CROSS
Bt;1sically, the Socialist movement on the Great Plains was a
perfect foil for the personality of Eugene Debs. Among the im-
migrant workingmen of the Eastern slums, Socialism was often
regarded with deep piety. It was the object of fierce, unrelenting
effort, which forbade all jesting. But a man starving, dying of
tuberculosis. his children in rags, cannot wait forever, so the
Eastern socialists seized any chance to make a small gain, to
escape from the ravages of poverty.
Both of these attitudes were reversed in the Southwest, where
the present was tolerable but socialism held the promise of a
golden future. Many prairie farmers sneered at immediate de-
mands and insisted upon a fight for the ultimate goal.
These impossibilists, as they were called, were unable to pre-
serve a serious attitude toward any desire. They commonly
fought their heads off to win a point, and then jeered at the
effort they had made. This pose had become second nature to
the Westerners, the dauntless hero laughing as he pulls the beard
of God. Prairie radicals, while they paid grudging respect to
shrewd, tight-fisted businessmen, also admired generosity,
courage, and rebelliousness, three qualities exaggerated to enor-
mous power in Eugene Debs.
To most American Socialists, Debs had a status near to
divinity. He was adored, almost worshipped, but he was also
mocked by the men who knew him best. The Debs Legend held
two sets of anecdotes about the Socialist leader: those which
emphasized his unusual aspects, and those designed to prove
that he was, after all, just an ordinary person. The"second cate-
gory is typified by a story about Debs' speech at a Labor Day
picnic in Terre Haute. These picnics were always gay, rollicking
affairs, with the beer getting more attention than the orator.
But this day Debs was in fine fettle, holding his audience spell-
bound for more than two hours. Such a long speech in hot
weather left him very thirsty, and he was glad to share several
schooners of beer with the men around the barrel As usual, he
was unable to hold his liquor, so he soon lay down under a tree
on the brink of the bluff. Some of his friends, also rather drunk,.
quickly took advantage of their chance and rolled him over the
low cliff into the river. They then stood on the bank and slapped
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
i89
their thighs as he emerged from the river, water dripping from
his clothing and slushing in his shoes.
This story was true, but its popularity did not rest on its
truth. The plain fa.ct was that these men enjoyed the humiliation
of their chosen hero. Another anecdote persisted in spite of its
dubious accuracy and doubtful parentage. One night in Debs'
youth, according to the story, his mother was awakened by the
sound of footsteps climbing to the attic. It was long after the
family curfew, so she went to investigate. The attic held only
her two sons. Since both of the boys seemed to be sleeping
soundly, Daisy relied on her intuition. She made Theodore climb
out of bed for a strapping. Shivering from cold, sleep, and be-
wilderment, the younger son merely tightened his jaw and said
nothing. Eugene Debs, the actual culprit, let his brother take
the whipping. Theodore was justly angry for several days, but
even this treachery was not enough to shake his adoration of his
brother. And Eugene Debs. so the story ends, became so
ashamed of his r()le in the affair that he never mentioned it again.
[ ! ]
DlJRlliG the spring and summer of 1909, Debs must have felt
like a man on vacation. Although he did his share of work for
the Appeal, it was a novelty for him to eat regularly and to sleep
in a bed rather than a coach seat. His health mended rapidly in
the leisurely atmosphere of Girard and Terre Haute. Debs' love
of the public platform, his fondness for a more strenuous life.
would inevitably have whirled him out of this office routine. But
his return to the lecture circuit was doubtless hastened by an
action of the Federal courts.
The Postal authorities had taken exception to two articles in
the Appeal-to Reaaon of January 5, 1907, at the height of the
defense campaign for Moyer. Haywood, and Pettibone. The
Appeal's protest in this case was based on a contention that the
defendants' extradition was illegal, that they were actually kid-
napped. When the Supreme Court refused to grant habeas
corpus, Debs termed their decision "the blackest chapter in the
history of that tribunal." He further charged that the verdict
T HE BENDING CROSS
meant that "the workingman h8s no right the capitalist is bound
to respect."
Fred Warren, in the second disputed article, had gone much
further. A former governor, Taylor of Kentucky, was wanted in
his native state for questioning in connection with the murder
of a political rival. Taylor had fled to Indiana, and the governor
refused to extradite him. Warren decided that this case was
analogous to the situation of Haywood, except that Haywood
was a labor leader and Taylor was a capitalist politician. In
order to prove his point, Warren offered a thousand-dollar re-
ward to anybody who seized Taylor and turned him over to the
Kentucky authorities.
These articles by Debs and Warren had stimulated two sepa-
rate indictments for sending "scurrilous, defamatory and threat-
ening" literature through the mails. The case ag,ainst Warren,
after being postponed for more than two years, was finally
decided in the spring of 1909. The editor of the Appeal was
sentenced to six months in jail and a fine of five thousand dol-
lars. 1 this verdict were permitted to stand, separate indict-
ments on the same charge could be brought against the other
responsible editors of the newspaper. The AppiJal to Reason
would be put out of business. So the decision was immediately
appealed to a higher court, and plans were made to enlist public
sympathy on this issue.
Like the Moyer-Haywood campaign, the Warren defense was
based on joint action by the Appeal to Reason and Eugene Debs.
Several conferences were held in Girard to perfect the arrange-
ments. Finally terms were announced for the lecture tour by
Debs, under the national auspices of the Appeal: The local
sponsor in each city agreed to sell a thousand tickets at twenty-
five cents each, of which fifteen cents went to the Appeal, .and
each lecture ticket carried a forty-week subscription to the
Girard weekly. Thus every speech by Debs would gain a thou-
sand readers for the Appeal.
The tour began in November at Fred Warren's home town of
Rich Hill, Missouri. Debs was profoundly convinced that there
was no basis for the indictment; the entire case against Warren
seemed a frame-up to the Socialist Of at or. His voice had new
AMERICAN SOCIALISM ~ 9
zest as he tried to make the people of Rich Hill understand the
greatness of their local son. Fred Warren, said Debs, was one of
the modern apostles of freedom: "All great movements are or-
ganized by the few and in their inception are unpopular, their
principles are misrepresented and their leaders are compelled to
pay the penalties which have always attached to those who have
paved the way to better conditions for the human race." This
idea was featured in every Debs speech for twenty years; his ex-
pression in Rich Hill was simply a rephrased version of his
speech in Girard, May, 1908. His listeners long remembered his
IDain point: that the Socialists were the forerunners of a new
society, much as the early Christians had been forerwmers, and
the Socialists too were being crucified for their ideas.
As the tour went on, Debs became more and more outspoken
in his criticism of the courts. He constantly repeated his earlier
epigram : "Under capitalist misrule the judicial nets are So ad-
justed as to catch the minnows and let the whales slip through."
Enormous crowds turned out to hear Debs lambast the Supreme
Court. The circulation of the Appeal which was 368,791 when
the tour began, averaged more than five hundred thousand for
the year. The Postal authorities tried to halt this rise by ruling
that all subscriptions given with tickets to Debs' lectures
counted as free copies and could not be.mailed second class. But
Fred Warren simply ignored the ruling, and it became a dead
letter.
Shortly before Christmas, Debs returned to Terre Haute to
spend the holidays with Kate. Jubilant over the growing sup-
port for Warren, he was sparkling with stories about his travels.
In October, while on a short swing through the East, he had
spent an evening with two close friends whom he seldom met,
Horace Traubel and William F. Gable. He was greatly amused
by Gable, who owned a large department store in Altoona,
Pennsylvania, and still contributed generously to radical causes.
Debs later described the full extent of his friend's schizophrenia:
"Gable never let his right hand know what his left hand did,
because that hand was nearer his heart. Gable always gave
money in cash. He never k ~ p t any record or any account of his
contributions to the causes in which he believed."
THE BENDING CROSS
Horace Traubel, in his own way, was just as peculiar as
Gable. Traubel was one of the leading disciples of Walt Whit-
man, having been one of Whitman's literary executors. His
entire life was spent in an effort to realize his idol's dream of a
New Democracy. For thirty-eight years he published in Phila-
delphia a small newspaper, the Conservator, which he wrote,
edited, and printed himself. Although Traubel was not a S0-
cialist, his fervid humanitarianism attracted him to' Debs, and
he wrote one of the better poems about the Socialist leader.
Debs responded by a glittering eulogy to Traubel: "In his fear-
less search for truth and his passionate demand for justice there
is nothing too sacred for this brilliant iconoclast .to attack and
nothing too humble for him to love." In fact Debs, with literary
taste much weaker than his father's, even asserted that Traubel
"goes beyond his revered master." As in most instances, Debs
was more concerned with a man's intentions than his accom-
plishments.
Debs was scheduled to open his winter tour on January 23,
1910, in Chicago. Just as he was preparing to leave Terre Haute,
he was again stricken by the grippe. Kate urged him to cancel
his first engagements, but Debs refused to hear of it. After all,
the Chicago comrades had distributed thirty thousand copies
of the Appeal to advertise his meeting. So a feverish Debs caught
a train for Chicago and drove himself through a long oration.
In the next eight days he gave fourteen lectures in Ohio, during
February another twenty in Pennsylvania. The weather was
extremely bitter in both states; there was a blizzard in Penn-
sylvania, but Debs acted as if he had never been ill a day in his
life.
Not content with carrying his message to the large cities,
Debs left ihemainroad toventureup a guDy, which held a dingy
row of miners' shacks. When he left the highway, he had two
hundred dollars in his pockets. When he emerged from the
gully, he was forced to walk to the next town where he borrowed
enough change to wire Girard for more money. He had given
his expense money to the miners' wives.
Tramping through waist-deep snow and giving away his
money were not the limits of Debs' impetuosity. Ella Reeve
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Bloor, a middle-aged mother and Socialist organizer, was on the
cominittee which arranged his meetings in Philadelphia. He was
coming from Wilkes-Barre, and Mother Bloor met his train at
the station. He seemed very tired, so his hostess charged, "I'll
bet you have been staying up every night talking to the miners."
"Yes, 1 have," Debs admitted. "Aren't they great fellows?
Last night they were talking to me until pretty nearly morning
and then when 1 was going to bed, a fellow timidly knocked on
my door. 'I thought: he said, 'since you have to get up at five
anyway, we might as wen spend the rest of the night talking.' "
The miner's logic seemed perfect, so they did.
After he had described the incident, Debs exclaimed, "Now,
aren't they wonderful fellows? Ella, I how you do the very
same thing." As he said this, Mother Bloor thought that "his
tired face [wasI alight with warmth and love." She also recorded
that her children were so taken by Debs that they insisted on
going with him to the railroad station.
Debs was justly proud of the political results of his tour,
which he described as "in all regards the most successful of my
experience." But his personal elation was malTed the very day
the tour began by news of the accidental death of the eldest
Reynolds daughter. Even after Jean Reynolds died, Debs could
see her running up the stairs of the Reynolds' home, her red
hair :floating in a long stream. He remembered her gay laughter
as she played. the grand piano in the living room. The day after
his Chicago speech, his body still racked by fever, Debs wrote
to the grief-stricken parents: "My Dearest Comrades-Never
have I felt so near as now, in the deeps of your greatest sorrow.
Dear, sweet, beautiful Jean has been before me all these hours,
and my tears have mingled with yours, and 1 have been with
you, my dearest comrades, in every moment of your agony. . . .
Jean was as sweet and pure asthe soul of an angel and Katherine
and I loved her as if she had been our own child. . . . She is
not gone from you, this divine daughter of your dream, this
perfect daughter of your love-she is with you still and her
hallowed presence will sweeten your lives and be to you a bow
of promise and a perpetual benediction."
When Debs got back to Girard late in February to prepare for
THE BENDING CROSS
a spring tour of the Great Lakes region, he found Julius Way-
land waiting for him. Several stories about "generous Gene
Debs" had reached Wayland's ear. Louis Kopelin, later a re-
porter for the Appeal, claimed that he had met Debs on Park
Row in New York City. Although the day was bitterly cold.
Debs was not wearing an overcoat. He finally admitted that he
had given his coat to a tramp at the entrance to Brooklyn
Bridge. Frank Roderus of Terre Haute told a similar yarn. He
had run into the Socialist leader a few blocks from the Dearborn
Street station in Chicago. Debs had immediately hailed his
fellow townsman and borrowed twenty dollars, explaining that
. he had given all of his money to an elderly woman he met on
the street.
Incidents of this sort, which formed a major part of the Debs
Legend, disgusted Julius Wayland. He had often lectured Debs
about the stupidity of wasting time on the individual victims
of capitalism, many of whom could never be restored to happi-
ness. This time Wayland was so annoyed that he scarcely waited
until Debs got inside the office before he began: "Every minute
you waste on an individual is at the expense of the greater good
you could be doing for all of society. Cut it out and devote your
time to the larger movement. Fight the system. and let its vic-
tims go to the devil."
Debs conceded the theory, but he balked at any attempt to
practice it: "I know, J. A., that you are philosophically correct,
but for me to follow any other course than I do would be im-
possible. We are not constituted alike." Wayland turned on his
heel and left the office. He later said that "Debs has the soul
of a poet," as if that explained everything.
[ 3 ]
DEBS soon left Girard on another leg of the Warren defense cam-
paign. While on tour he was forced to pay some attention to
the factional fight in the .Socialist Party. Year after year this
fight had grown in bitterness, but Debs had consistently tried to
stay out of it. There were several reasons for Debs' attitude. lie
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
295
thought that Jimmie Higgins, . the real authority in the party,
should hear all positions and choose among them. One Sunday
in Girard he discussed the factional quarrel with Allen W.
Ricker. a reporter for the Appeal. Debs repeated to Ricker
something that he had often said: "It is my greatest concern
that I USe no personal power which I may possess. The masses
have ever been betrayed by the ambition and selfishness of
leaders." This position was fully supported by Warren's weekly,
which urged the workingmen to "trust no man as a leader."
Another reason why Debs tried to stay out of the factional
fight was the identification of certain policies with certain indi-
viduals. It was impossible to attack anarcho-syndicalism with-
out attacking Bill Haywood. who had earned Debs' deep respect
by his part in the Western Federation of Miners and the 1WW.
It was impossible to attack the reform elements in the Party
without naming Morris Hillquit, Victor Berger, Seymour Sted-
man, J. Mablon Barnes, and Max Hayes. All of these men had
been charter members of the Socialist Party. Victor Berger's
visit to Woodstock had helped convert Debs to radicalism, and.
as Debs said, "I have loved him ever since." The reform wing
of the Party alsoheld several journalists who had written glow-
ing eulogies of Debs and thus earned his enduring affection. The
Socialist leader set too high a value on personal friendship to
denounce his old acquaintances.
This identification of policies and in.dividuals complicated the
situation in yet another way. Haywood did not believe in politi-
cal action, was a dual-unionist, and had departed from several
basic tenets of unionism; but he believed in the Socialist goal
and industrial unionism, and was a marvelous fighter. The right
wing had' abandoned the campaign for industrial unions, was
compromising with the labor bureaucracy, had lost sight of
socialism; but it believed in political action, secured many
valuable reforms, and its adherents were sincere. Debs, unable
to join either of these factions. was forced to hold an anomalous
center position and fire blasts at both sides. He hoped for the
impossible-that the two factions would neutralize each other
without immobilizing the Party. Then the rank and file could
THE BENDING CROSS
march straight ahead down the path charted by Eugene Debs.
Actually, the factionalism did immobilize the Party, and it also
caused thousands of members to resign in disgust.
Although Debs usually ignored the internal politics of the
Party, he did intervene in several situations after 1908. The first
crisis recognized by Debs occurred in the autumn of 1909. The
National Executive Committee was elected annually by a!direct
vote of all members. The rank and file in each state usually
voted for local favorite sons, splitting their vote in fifty di-
rections. Only the writers and lawyers could command a na-
tional following, so they were consistently re-elected with 5 or
10 per cent of the total vote. Many workingmen revolted against
this method of election which tended to perpetuate control by
the intellectuals. In August, 1909, a Socialist local in Denver
withdrew from the Party, charging that the leaders were "fad-
dists, careerists and notoriety-seekers." Similar action was taken
by other locals. Debs was so alarmed y ~ 'this exodus of the
workingmen that he brie1ly entered the fight in December with
a letter to William English Walling, a Socialist writer. The letter
was immediately published by the I ntemational Socialist Review:
... I have been watching the situation closely and especially
the tendencies to reaction to which we are so unalterably op-
posed The Socialist Party has already CATERED FAR TOO
MUCH to the American Federation of Labor and there is no
doubt that A HALT WILL HA VE TO BE CALLED.
The REVOLUTIONARY character of our party and our
movement MUST be preserved in all its integrity AT ALL
COST, for if that be compromised, it had better cease to exist.
I have no fear that any great number will be deflected when
it comes to a show-down. . . . I am more than gratified with
your uncompromising spirit and attitude. If the trimmers had
their w\V'. i j ~ should degenerate into bourgeois reform. But
THEY NOT HAVE THEIR WAY.
Debs had clearly stated his position, but he neglected to name
the "trimmers." He also neglected to follow up the fight he had
begun. Six months passed before he issued another statement
on Party policy.
In May, 1910, a biennial policy convention of the Socialist
Party was meeting in Chicago. This convention resulted in a
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
clear victory for the "tendencies to reaction" that Debs feared,
and he was again forced to take up the cudgel against the right
wing. In an obvious bid for support from the AFI., which had
long sought restrictions on immigration, the Commiitee on
Immigration advocated the exclusion of all Orientals from the
United States. Debs promptly sent the convention a forceful
denunciation of this proposal, calling it "unsociaJistic, reaction-
ary and in truth outrageous." Such a suggestion, he roared,
would be "entirely consistent in a convention of self-seekers."
If socialism does not "stand staunchly, unflinchingly, and un-
compromisingJy for the working class and for the exploited and
oppressed masses of all lands, then it stands for none and its
claim is a false pretense and its profession a delusion and a
snare." This letter arrived too late to be read at the convention,
and was printed later in the International Socialist Reuiew. The
issue was finally settled, not by Debs, but by the Party's genius
at compromise, Morris Hillquit. Hillquit's substitute resolution
opposed "the exclusion of immigrants on account of their race
or nationality," but favored exclusion in order to limit the num-
ber of wage earners competing for jobs. Actually no compromise
at all, the Socialist position was perfectly acceptable to Samuel
Gompers.
Even more important was the convention's discussion of trade
unionism. The quarrel between radicals and conservatives again
flared into open conHict. This question had been argued for
years, and only one new argument was presented: A southern
deJegate maintained that industrial unionism was the only way
to reach the Negro workers and win them for socialism. But the
controversy was already decided. The right wing had a majority
and did not hesitate to use it. In another concession to theAFL,
the delegates refused to take any position on unionism, declar-
ing that they would not interfere with the policies or structure
of the trade unions. The left wing minority promptly termed
this action a "betrayal of the cause of the working class."
Debs' viewpoint was published in the International Socialist
Review. Again he simply stated his attitude, without denouncing
the leaders of the opposition. He called for a campaign to enlist
every American workingman in unions organized on an indus-
!!98 THE BENDING CROSS
trial or plant-wide basis: Such unions must be immediately
founded in the mass production industries, which operate on an
open-shop basis. But he did not favor "organizing dual unions
in any case where the old union substantially holds the field."
In any honest struggle against the employers, the craft unions
are entitled to the full support of all labor, said Debs; but we
must simultaneously strive to dislodge the "labor fakers" and
convert the craft unions into class-conscious, industrial unions.
Once more Debs had taken a middle position in the Party; he
had attacked dual unionism, an avowed left-wing policy, and
craft unionism, a tacit right-wing policy. He was not alone in
his views, but his support was scattered and unorganized. The
article had no immediate results, and Debs again turned hiD
back on the entire problem of Party policy.
[ 4- ]
EXCITING problems, personal problems, controlled Debs' heart
and mind as he headed toward Terre Haute in June, 1910. For
thirty years he had wanted it child of his own. Now, in his middle
age, he had a foster son. Oscar Baur, Jr., a ten-year-old, was
the son of Kate's stepbrother. The boy's mother had died two
years earlier, and he had come to live with Kate and Gene Debs.
Kate Debs was severely strained by her new position. Having
grown to maturity in a home that had no children, she was ill-
equipped to cope with the situation. Long years of solitude had
converted her into a prim housekeeper, whose life centered on
her home. She was more than neat; she was fastidious. Years of
habit made her resentful of muddy footprints on the rugs and
of clothing and toys scattered through the house. Her morbid
concern about the health of children prompted her to give them
a single piece of candy, then put the box away and refuse to
give another. Ten-year-old boys do not take kindly to such
treatment.
Eugene Debs did not make these mistakes. He did not care
if Oscar tore the house down; in fact, he was willing to aid the
process. He bought the boy a fox terrier, Buster, and accom-
panied the two of them on long tramps over the surrounding
A MERICAN SOCIALISM
hills. He delighted in throwing a stick several yards and sending
the dog to retrieve it; as they prowled through the meadows and
tramped along the Tow Path by the old canal bed, Debs doubt-
less remembered the countless mornings, forty years earlier,
when he had come this way with his father. Debs also revived a
pastime nearly forgotten, one which had caused the
residents to call Daniel a "crazy Frenchman." After a heavy
spring rain, Debs and Oscar would go away in the back country;
the next day the entire attic of the Debs' would be fes-
tooned with drying mushrooms.
These new relations had a catalytic effect on the household.
When George Bicknell, a friend of Steve Reynolds, was prepar-
ing an article about Debs, he decided to interview Kate. In
reply to a question, she said: "Indeed I am a Socia1ist. We are
all Socialists around here." Then came the astounding dis-
closure. Oscar Baur, Jr. had been reared in comparative luxury,
the son of a wealthy man. But a few years with Debs had
changed his childish convictions. According to Kate, "My little
nephew, Oscar Baur, Jr., who lives with us, says he is a Social-
ist, too. He was not sure at first, but finally decided to follow
in Mr. Debs' footsteps."
In her interview with George Bicknell, Kate said, "I think
the solution of all the great economic problems will be made by
the Socialist party, following the lines of Socialist theories."
This statement is rather misleading; Kate often doubted the
wisdom of socialism. Her contribution to the Socialist cause had
been both indirect and simple; she had contrived to keep her
husband out of the poorhouse and the cemetery. But in the
summer of 1910 she made a more spirited venture into the field
of politics. "The Right of Women to Vote/' by Katherine M.
Debs, appeared in the Terre Haute Post and was reprinted by
several radical journals. This well-written article was based on
the situation of five million. working women in the United
States. These women were forced to compete with men for jobs,
and many of them supported huge families; but they were
shoved consistently into poor jobs at little pay. Their lack of
suffrage them of that small measure of protection
which men posse,ssed. Kate also met head-on two of the main
800
THE BENDING CROSS
arguments against woma.n suffrage, by stating that "woman has
all the essential qualities of ma.n, not excepting mentality a.nd
initiative" and 'lethe kind of politics that will degrade a woman
will also degrade a man."
One portion of the article clearly shows the hand of Eugene
"Thirty yeais ago Susan B. Anthony, the noble champion
of woman suffrage in the early days of the movement, was
treated with almost brutal contempt by the 'better element' of
society, in the city of Terre Haute; today her name is honored
throughout the civilized world." Debs had never forgotten the
jeers and catcalls of his friends as he escorted Miss Anthony
through the local streets, that day in 1879. In April, 1910, just
three months before Kate wrote her article, Debs spoke in
Susan B. Anthony's home town of Rochester, N. Y. The follow-
ing morning, even though it was raining, he placed a large
bouquet on the grave of the champion of woma.n suffrage.
That summer in Terre Haute really seemed like another vaca-
tion to Eugene Debs. He wrote his weekly articles for the Appeal
and stayed abreast of his extensive but he was
not working under the customary pressure. So he genially agreed
to co-operate with the young Terre Haute philosopher and poet,
Max Ehnnann. who intended to write his biography. When
Ehrmann :first made the proposal in February, 1910, Debs was
in Pennsylva.nia lecturing for Fred Warren. He was not very
excited by the idea of a second biography of himself. Reynolds'
effort had been part of the campaign literature in 1908; Ehr-
mann's proposal did not have a similar justification. Debs tried
to discourage the project: "The suggestion you make in refer-
ence to my biography interests me although I can hardly per-
suade myself that it is worth the while. I believe with Ingersoll
that a life should be lived before it is written. When mine is over
there may not be enough in it to claim biographical attention."
But, at Ehrmann's insistence, Debs finally agreed to furnish
him with some recollections. The writer spent several mornings
at Debs' office on Wabash Street, listening to Eugene and Theo-
dore talk about oid times. Debs even revealed that he had once
wanted to be a song-and-dance man, arid told how he had cried
when his class graduated from high school without him. His
AMERICAN SOCIALISM SOl
main emphasis, however, was upon his early experiences in the
labor movement, which Debs considered the focal point in his
life. He and Theodore had a wonderful time trying to piece to-
gether the story of Debs' first job on the Vandalia, the organi-
zation of the BLF, the mighty struggle against the Great
Northern. One of them would begin to talk; the other one would
interrupt; soon they were both laughing together. Unfortu-
nately, these conversations were fragmentAry and contained
little usable information. The project gradually died. Both Debs
and Ehrmann became busy with other things; the book was
never written.
During the last twenty years of his life, Debs spoke often
about his early manhood, mainly because he thought his own
experience might be helpful to others. The Socialist leader
recognized that he was, in many ways, a typical American
workingman. His own intellectual progress had been uncertain
and painful; evep.ts had always kicked him into the next step
forward. In several cases, repeated kicks had been needed before
he would move. Eugene Debs, in his entire life, had never based
an important decision on words written by somebody else. But
certain writers-Victor Hugo, Thomas Paine, Edward Bellamy,
Karl Kautsky-had clarified and strengthened the results of his
own observation. Debs hoped that the story of his life could
perform this same function for the men who came after him.
Another factor prompted Debs to co-operate with his
would-be biographers. He felt a personal obligation to en-
courage writers with a humanitarian outlook. He warmly
praised dozens of journalists and poets; he unofficially sponsored
several men of letters. One of these proteges was Max Ehrmann.
Thinking that Ehrmann's work expressed the idealism of the
Socialist cause, Debs once sent a sample to. Edwin Markham.
He hoped :that Markham would encourage the Terre Haute
author. Within a few days the package was returned, unopened.
Markham said that he was too busy to bother with it. Debs was
furious. Markham had been an unknown California school-
teacher when Debs praised <'Man with the Hoe." To make
matters worse, Markham now claimed to be a Socialist. That
was more than Debs could tolerate. In the middle of an election
campaign, the Socialist leader wrote a reproachful letter to the
famous poet. Successful men, Debs said, had an obligation to
help their younger colleagues. The condemnation was so un-
qualified that Markham reconsidered his previous decision. He
also sent Debs an autographed copy of "Man with the Hoe,"
which was promptly framed and placed on the wall of the up-
stairs study.
One August morning in 1910, when Debs was in the office
giving dictation to his brother, a carpenter came to see Theodore
about some hardwar.e needed on the new home Theodore was
building. The problem was quickly settled, and Debs strolled up
Wabash Street with the carpenter. At Eleventh Street there
were several men at work repairing the pavement. The events
which followed made a deep impression on the carpenter; thirty
years later he wrote an illiterate but moving account of the
incident:
,Gene asked the foreman when the men would get off for noon
he said as he had no watch the foreman a big "roufih neck" an-
swered him very roodly "when it was 12 o'clock' Gene then
said it is awful hot for men to have to work out there in that
terrible heat. The forman said if they had taken care of their
money they might not have to work in the hot sun and walked
away Gene turned to me and asked the time it was just 2 min-
utes until 12 o'clock we waited the forman blue a little whistle
the men stoped work and went after their lunch buckets Gene
called to them saying men who have been working out there in
that awful hot sun please step over here we walked across 11th
St. to a restaurant and he asked them all to come in who had
been working out in the browling hot sun on the pavement he
then asked the proprietor of the restaurant if he had any good
cold butter-milk to let these men have a big glass then he ordered
a meal for each one of the workers and an erlry glass of butter-
m,ilk the men took up about all the available chairs and tables
in the restaurant. I heard one man ask another who is that who
is that man that is treating Us to this lunch the other man said
I do not know it may be Eugene Debs they say he does things
like this to working men I managed to see what money he
handed the proprietor it was a $10.00 bill and he received 15
cents in change back, and we walked on down the street Debs
said to me that cold butter-milk will do them good after working
in that awful hot sun.
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
sos
[ 6 ]
IN JULY, 1910, Debs went to the hospital for another throat
operation; but a month later he wrote to Julius Wayland: "I'm
getting all right and am champing at the bit for action." This
note was mere bluster; he was still recuperating in November
when a Federal Circuit Court upheld the sentence against Fred
Warren. Unable'to restrain himself any longer, Debs dispatched
a telegram to the offending court: "Capitalist class supremacy
and working class slavery are triumphantly vindicated in your
post-election decision in the Warren case. All things come to
those who own the earth and the courts thereof---even the social
revolution." Then he began another leCture tour. By the year's
end, the Appeal to Reason had 472,255 paid subscribers. Debs
had given more than two hundred speeches for the weekly dur-
ing 1910; 90 per cent of them made a profit for their local
sponsor.
When Debs crossed North Dakota and Minnesota on the
Great Northern railroad, he found every conductor wearing a
red button. Most of them were selling Debs' lecture tickets to
the passengers. Debs, delighted at this sign of rebellion against
one of his oldest rivals, asked if they were not afraid of losing
their jobs. One conductor replied: "When Jim Hill starts to
firing men on the Great Northern for being Socialists he won't
have enough slaves left to people his hand cars.';
Since the Pullman strike of 1894, Debs had despised the
federal courts, and all of his rancor poured into the campaign
to prevent Fred Warren's imprisonment. He regarded the judi-
ciary as the most concentrated expression of modern inequality.
Every exposure of legal injustice, to his mind, was a blow for
socialism: ''The capitalist court is an infallible index to the
capitalist system. To know the court is to understand the sys-
tem. The court cannot be abolished or reformed while the system
remains."
Debs insisted that Fred Warren waS a legitimate heir to the
principles of John Peter Zenger, who had been tried a hundred
and seventy years earlier for defying the British censorship in
America. Warren. too, was being tried for his ideas: "When the
THE BENDING CROSS
federal court sent Warren to jail it was not to punish crime,
but to strangle free speech and stifle the voice of protest against
crime. . . . Let the shibboleth of the American people ring
from ocean to ocean and resound throughout the land: FREE
SPEECH, A FREE PRESS, AND A FREE PEOPLE!" And,
once again, Debs was on the winning side.
On February 2, 1911, President Taft decided to exercise his
executive clemency. For unstated reasons, he struck the six
months' imprisonment from Warren's sentence and reduced the
fine to a hundred dollars. An official pardon was duly delivered
to Fred Warren in Girard. The pardon did not bear a union
label. Elated at this oversight, Warren hastily seized his chance
to jeer at the President. Pasting on the document a huge sticker:
"Demand the Label on All Your Printing," he returned it to
Taft. The next issue of the Appeal carried a reproduction of the
pardon. Beneath the picture, Warren declared that he would
not "pay the $100 fine otherwise than in the form of Appeal
sub cards." But Taft, more cautious than Roosevelt, refused to
engage in a public discuBsion with the Girard weekly. Warren
never did pay the fine.
Before Fred Warren was pardoned, Debs was embroiled in an
even more momentous court battle. On October 1, 1910, during
a strike of metal workers in southern California, the Los Angeles
Times building was destroyed by dynamite. Twenty persons
were killed and seventeen injured. General Harrison Gray Otis,
the Times' publisher and a long-time advocate of the open o p ~
held the entire labor movement responsible for the crime. All
union men, said 0tiB, were murderers at heart.
Debs at once renewed his enmity with General Otis. Every
victim of the Times' explosion was a worker, said Debs' article
in the Appeal; the publisher had conveniently arranged to be
miles away. This was a clear charge, with no available proof,
that General Otis had prior knowledge of the dynamiting. The
Times and its coterie of antilabor industrialists were deemed to
be "themselves the instigators, if not the actual perpetrators"
of the crime. But a vigorous investigation yielded no clue to the
identity of the culprits, and Debs thought that the case was
closed. He was mistaken.
Two officials of the AFL Structural Iron Workers, John J.
McNamara and his brother James B., were indicted for the
bombing in March, 1911. At the time of his arrest, John Mc-
Namara was attending an executive board meeting of his union
in Indianapolis. The other men present were held incommuni-
cado while he was secretly extradited by a justice of the peace
who had no jurisdiction. The events were, in their essentials, a
repetition of the Moyer-Haywood arrest five years earlier.
Eugene Debs was again one of the first men to rise to the
defense. His articles in the Appeal carried the fiery tone of his
articles for Moyer and Haywood: "Sound the alarm to the work-
i ~ class! Arouse, ye hosts of labor, and swear that the
villainous plot shall not be consummated." Throughout the
spring and summer, Debs toured the country in defense of the
McNamaras. His position was once more based on the belief
that the trial was a frame-up of innocent labor leaders. He de-
manded that the case should be decided in a court of law, not in
the newspaper headlines. In New York City he told his audi-
ence: "We have a better right to presume these men innocent
before they are tried than the corporations and their hirelings
have to presume them guilty."
This case involved far more than the lives of the McNamara
brothers. Many newspapers were using it to prove that all trade
unionists and socialists believed in sabotage. The Los Angeles
Times charged that "anarchist paper," the Appeal to Reaaon,
with "appealing to the prejudices and the lurking criminality
and the ignorance of its readers." These charges had united the
entire labor movement in defense of the McNamaras. Even -the
AFL Executive Council had published an appeal to the working-
men in behalf of the defendants. Yet another consideration
motivated the Socialists; one of their leaders, Job Harriman,
was the foremost contender in a bitter campaign for mayor of
Los Angeles. His chances were widely understood to hinge on
the outcome of the McNamara case.
The defense campaign had reckoned without the defendants.
Two of Debs' close friends, Lincoln Steffens and Clarence Dar-
row, reached a secret understanding with the prosecution. On
December 1, 1911, the McNamara brothers confessed their
THE BENDING CROSS
guilt to the Los Angeles jury. John McNamara had agreed to
plead guilty on the promise of clemency to his younger brother;
otherwise, they might both have been hanged. But the confes-
sion was a terrific blow to the labor movement, which had
worked its way out to the end of the limb. Trade unionists and
Socialists issued hasty disavowals of their previous statements.
Five days later, Harriman polled only fifty thousand votes
against eighty-seven thousand for his opponent.
Eugene Debs was one of the few men who refused to be
routed. His article in the Appeal began a retreat by stating that
the McNamaras had been Catholics, not Socialists, but he
quickly resumed the offensive. General Otis and his friends,
said Debs, were indirectly responsible for the bombing: "Jim
McNamara may have placed, and very likely did place, the
dynamite, but who placed Jim McN amaraP" The MeN amaras
had seen twenty members of the Lake Seamen's Union shot
down by agents of the United States Steel Corporation, the
article stated. They had seen their own union wrecked and
nearly destroyed by company violence. They had seen each
session of Congress refuse to pass an anti-injunction bill. They
had seen the courts legalize the kidnaping of Bill Haywood and
Charles Moyer. Daily for years they had risked their lives on
the high-altitude scaffolding where they worked. Their entire
background had turned their faces to violence. Debs declared
that he had no apologies to make for either. the McNamaras or
himself. But their violent act, if they were indeed guilty, had
been a horrible error; it had'hanned the labor movement and
given the corporations cause to rejoice.
With that analysis of the M C ~ amara episode, Debs simply
put the whole matter out of his mind. There was a Presidential
campaign to be handled. As early as March 14, 1912, Debs
wrote to a friend: "I think the outlook is IJ9sitively inspiring.
There is some fierce fighting ahead without a doubt but the gods
are all with us and things are shaping rapidly for the undoing
of the powers that are grinding the faces of the people." Once
again, his spontaneous optimism was speaking instead of his
knowledge. Actually the factional fight in the Party was head-
ing for a showdown, and Debs fired a blast at both groupings.
AMERICAN SOCIALISM .. 807
The Socialist Party had scored several electoral victories in
1910, electing mayors in Schenectady and Milwaukee, winning
numerous positions in state legislatures, and finally electing its
first Congressman, Victor Berger. But Debs was far from
elated by thesE: seeming victories. ;In each case, he thought, the
candidates had won because they had deserted their principles.
They had been elected by f o ~ votes, not by Socialist votes.
In the winter of 1911, Debs again charged that the Party held
"not a few members who regard vote-getting as of supreme im-
portance, no matter by what method the votes are.secured, and
this leads them to hold out inducements and make representa-
tions which are not at all compatible with the stern and un-
compromising spirit of a revolutionary party;" It was treason,
he continued, to regard the Socialist platform "as a bait for
votes rather than as a means of education."
The basis for this reformism was discovered in the leadership
of the Party. The Socialists elected to public office were mainly
ministers, lawyers, and editors .. The top officials of the Party
were chosen from 'the same occupations. Debs declared this
wrong. The Socialist Party, as the party of the American work-
ingmen, should be guided and led by workingmen. Its policies
should be decided by workingmen. The better-educated mem-
bers can serve in other ways, said Debs---as writers, editors,
lecturers, cartoonists-but control of the organization should
not remain in their hands.
The left-wing tendencies in the Party were subjected to
equally pointed criticism. Debs gave a detailed analysis of the
IWW tactics, which called upon the individual worker to revolt
against his employer by stalling on the job and deliberately
wrecking J11aCh1nery. He stated that he had no respect for capi-
talist laws and would not have "the least scruple about vio-
lating them," but such violations were foolhardy. Most Ameri-
can workingmen were law-abiding and completely rejected
violent tactics. Violence actually played into the hands of the
employers, who welcomed it because it assured them of public
support. Moreover, individual action was the method of an
anarchist, not a socialist, because it did not promote but
destroyed the solida.rity of labor. The conclusion was clear
.THE BENDING CROSS
enough: "I am opposed to any tactics which involve stealth,
secrecy, intrigue, and necessitate acts of individual violence for
their execution."
Having publicly expressed his opinions, Debs again with-
drew from the discussion. He refused to wield his personal in-
fluence to win support for his policies; he even refused to be a
delegate to the Socialist national convention in Indianapolis in
May, 1912. Although he knew that this convention would decide
the basic questions before the Party, Debs preferred to continue
his lecture tour. He had said everything he had to say; the rank
and file had elected delegates; now the delegates could decide
without any pressure from him. Since the results of the con-
vention were partially due to Debs' refusal to take part in its
deliberations, he had no just cause for complaint when it was
over. But he did complain at the top of his voiceless than three
months after the convention adjourned.
In the battle for representation at Indianapolis, a decided
advantage was held by the conservative leaders. They had con-
trolled most of the Party machinery and Party press for more
than a decade. They had usually set the policies, so that large
numbers of reform voters had joined the organization and large
numbers of radical workingmen had left it. Eugene Debs, in
assuming that two factions of roughly equal strength would
neutralize each other, had neglected this factor. But Bill Hay-
wood noticed its effects. Haywood later expressed his contempt
for the delegates who met in Indianapolis on May 12: "The
class struggle meant nothing to many who were there sup-
posedly representing the working class." This contempt was
mutual; a right-wing leader said that Haywopd's election to the
National Executive Committee had been "a grave misfortune."
The convention immediately split, as had every Socialist
gathering for twelve years, over the trade-union question. The
majority of the Resolutions Committee favored an endorsement
of the AFL, the minority an endorsement of industrial unionism
but no specific organization. Aiter a long and complex discus-
sion, the minority gained enough converts to carry its position,
and a unanimous endorsement of industrial unionism was sent
to the :/loor, where it was passed. On the next day, the radical
AMERICAN SOCIALISM
S09
delegates again scored a victory by electing one of their number
as chairman of the convention.
The conservative leaders recognized the necessity of halting
this trend, and they cleverly seized the issue on which the radi-
cals were most vulnerable. A secret caucus of the Hillquit-
Berger adherents drafted an amendment to the Party constitu-
tion, which was introduced by the Rev. W. R. Gaylord. a state
senator in Wisconsin:
Article 2. Section 6. Any member of the party who opposes politi-
cal action or advocates crime, sabotage or other methods of
violence as a weapon of the working"class to aid in its emancipa-
tion shall be expelled from membership in the party.
The heated debate led to the inevitable result. The amendment
was adopted by a vote of 191 to 90.
" Having regained the initiative, the conservative leaders de-
cided to deny the Presidential nomination to Eugene Debs. They
had made a similar effort, with little success, in 1908; and their
determination had increased since that time. During the 1910
convention, when Debs attacked the Immigration Committee's
proposal to exclude Orientals, Ernest Un term ann had replied
for the right wing: "Comrade Debs is no doubt a great orator
and a fiery revolutionist, but he is also one of the poorest gen-
erals and tacticians that our movement has . . he has shown
himself utterly unreliable in the meeting of the practical prob-
lems of the day and the selection of his advisers. Nearly all of
his advisers in the labor movement have turned out to be
crooked."
If the entire right wing at the convention had united on a
single candidate, they could have made a strong showing against
Debs. But the Milwaukee and Chicago groups nominated Emil
Seidel, the mayor of Milwaukee, and the New York caucus put
up Charles Edward Russell, a magazine writer who had joined
the Party only four years earlier. Debs won three-fifths of the
votes on the :first ballot, and Seidel was nominated as his run-
ning mate.
Eugene Debs, meanwhile, had made an abortive effort to
promote Fred Warren for the Presidential nomination. During
his lectures in defense of Warren, he had constantly praised the
Appeal'8 editor as "the real champion of the working class, the
true leader of the people." Partly as a result of Debs' agitation,
many Socialists had sent letters to the Appeal suggesting War-
ren for President. Once when Warren was away from Girard,
Debs and Julius Wayland set a whole edition of the newspaper
which featured these letters. But Warren returned before the
issue had gone to press and insisted that it be changed. The en-
tire staff of the Appeal worked all day Sunday to undo what
Debs and Wayland had done. Whether he desired it or not,
Debs was again the candidate of the Socialist Party.
When he was nominated, Debs decided to rest during the hot
swnmer mon ths and save his strength for the home stretch. This
decision was quickly broken; he began his campaign on June
29 at St. Louis. There were factors working both for and a.gainst
the Socialists in the coming campaign. Theodore Roosevelt had
broken with the Republicans and was running on the Bull Moose
ticket. He and William Howard Taft were busily calling each
other names, thus providing ammunition for the Socialists. On
the other hand, both Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had
adopted several pIanks from the Socialist platform and were
certain to get the reform vote. Every ballot cast for Debs would
be a ballot for socialism.
The Socialists had a large and efficient election machine ready
to take the field, but there was again dissension within the
Party. At the convention, Morris Hillquit had managed to
effect the choice of J. Mahlon Barnes as campaign. manager,
even though Barnes had been forced to resign as national sec-
retary because of gossip about his personal life. The Christian
Socialist Fellowship"now renewed its attack on Barnes. The left
wing, hot for reve;ge because of the "sabotage" amendment,
gleefully joined the onslaught.
At a meeting of the National Executive Committee to con-
sider Barnes' position, Debs read several letters from comrades
who threatened to work against the ticket if Barnes remained
as manager. Debs was angry about the whole affair. He did not
like Barnes' morals, nor did he like Barnes' politics. Barnes
should be removed. Then John Spargo charged that the attacks
on Barnes were merely a cowardly attempt to blackmail the
Hillquit supporters; those who refused to work with Barnes
should leave the Party. Berger and Hillquit said exactly the
same thing-Get out. Now Debs was so furious that he was
literally screaming. With his long body leaning across the table,
he waggled his finger under Hillquit's nose and shouted that the
objections to Barnes had come from Socialists "just as good as
you, Comrade Hillquit." But the National Executive Commit-
tee decided that Barnes should stay. Barnes stayed.
Victor Berger's newspaper in Washington, D. C. commented
about the affair: "Many intelligent Socialists have long known
that Gene suffers from an unduly exaggerated ego." John Spargo
added that "Comrade Debs should be recalled" if he persisted
in his dictatorial complex. Spargo and Berger, whatever their
motives, were justified in their comments on this occasion. Since
Debs had refused to participate in the convention which chose
Barnes, he had no legitimate grounds for complaint about the
results.
The "exaggerated ego" of Eugene Debs did not interfere with
his campaign. He made a headlong tour of the country, giving
even more speeches than in 1908. His meetings were colorful
and dynamic. Late in September, eighteen thousand persons
crowded into Philadelphia's Convention HalL Even the anarch-
ists left their usual hangouts south of Pine Street. Several
professional politicians were present, perhaps to learn how to
use the propaganda their own parties had stolen from the So-
cialists. Girls wearing white dresses and red sashes moved among
the audience, selling leaHets and red flags for "only a nickel."
The box office receipts alone were twenty seven hundred dollars.
At Madison Square Garden in New York City, thirteen thou-
sand persons paid from twenty-five cents to a dollar each to
hear Debs. His appearance on the stage set off ten minutes of
deafening applause. Two hundred girls, in the traditional red
and white costume, acted as ushers. Art Young was present to
report the meeting for The Maase8, a rollicking left-wing
monthly. Ten years earlier, Young had called Debs "a school-
boy elocutionist." He now found the Socialist leader "an in-
spiring man, because he was himself inspired. He was emotional,
and used the logic of understanding born of long experience with
the workers. When one heard him voice a natural sympathy for
the enslaved, one felt that here was a champion who would go
to the stake rather than sacrifice his own beliefs." This speech
was not without results; the New York World estimated that
ten thousand dollars was collected at the meeting.
In 1908 several attempts had been made to discredit Debs.
but these were far surpassed in 19N. In one city Debs checked
into a strange hotel late at night. 'Wnen he opened the door of
his room he noticed assorted pieces of women's lingerie strewn
around the furniture. The author of this plot underestimated his
intended victim. Debs returned to the lobby, took witnesses up
to see the room, and insisted that all of the clothing be removed
before he would enter it. If any photographers were lying in
ambush, they were never discovered.
The reform platforms of Roosevelt and Wilson probably hurt
Debs badly, but he still amassed a record vote for the Socialist
Party. The final count showed that nearly nine hundred thou-
sand ballots had been marked for Debs and Seidel, almost 6 per
cent of the totaL The Party vote had more than doubled since
1908. There were several striking angles to the results. The Party
membership had declined throughout the campaign, largely
because of the "sabotage" amendment. The best showing, both
in total vote and in percentage, had been made in Ohio. At the
May convention, the Ohio delegates had voted nineteen to two
against the "sabotage" proposal; it had been the only large
state controlled by the left wing.
Immediately after the election the Republican administration
again opened its prosecution of the Appeal to Reason. Indict-
ments were issued against Debs, Julius Wayland, and Fred
Warren in connection with a series of muckraking articles about
Leavenworth prison. Debs had to go to the Federal Commis-
sioner's office in Terre Haute and post bond guaranteeing his
appearance in a Kansas court. Accompanied by his brother-in-
law and private banker, Arthur Baur, Debs strolled into the
office one morning and presented the bond. The Federal Com-
missioner, an old friend, felt rather sheepish about his part in
the matter, but Debs quickly threw an arm around his shoulder
AMERICAN SOCIALISM SIS
and laughingly said, "That's all right. This is just perfect. When
I get out there, 111 strip their goddam hides off." This pleasure
was denied him; the case never came to triaL It did, however,
almost wreck the Appeal to Reason. ,
The indictments for violation of the postal regulations had
scarcely been served when a rumor reached the Appeal office. A
girl who had once been employed by the weekly charged that
Julius Wayland had taken her to Joplin, Missouri, for immoral
purposes. This charge was ridiculous on the mere face of it.
Wayland was fifty-eight years old. It was less than a year since
his wife had been killed in an auto crash, and he was very
broken up about that. He was much too shrewd to be caught in
so obvious a trap. Finally, and conclusively, Wayland was so
moralistic that he was often unpleasant about it. '
But the truth of the charge, actually, was irrelevant. The
Federal District Attorney was ready to issue an indictment
against Wayland under the Mann Act. Wayland's name would
be smeared in half of the country's newspapers. The Appeal to
Reason would be destroyed. The case would drag on for years,
furnishing steady copy to the metropolitan dailies. The Socialist
movement would suffer even more than it had suffered during
the McNamara trial. And all of this would happen whether
Wayland was innocent or guilty.
An obvious solution presented itself, and Wayland took it.
One evening he placed a brief note in his copy of Looking Back-
ward, then blew his brains out with a revolver. The note read:
"The struggle under the, capitalist system isn't worth the effort.
Let it pass." One of the most colorful and capable figures in the
American Socialist movement had given up the fight.
Eugene Debs, already exhausted by his work in the cam-
paign, was completely prostrated by this newest tragedy. He
and Julius Wayland had been friends, almost partners, for fif-
teen years. They had bOOn business associates for more than
five years. And, in spite of their vigorous disagreement about
individual charity, they understood and loved each other. They
were both Midwestern radicals, born of the same society, dedi-
cated to the same principles. Debs felt for Wayland the respect
that comes from long association in the same battle.
S14 THE BENDING CROSS
The most fitting epitaph was pronounced, not by Eugene
Debs, but by Kate Richanls O'Hare, who soon replaced Julius
Wayland as Debs' business colleague. Kate O'Hare sent a brief
telegram to Wayland's son: ''We shed no tears of grief; grief
is for the naked lives of those who have made the world no
better."
Part IV.
World Socialism
"And, in heaven's name, who are the public
enemies?" exclaimed Dr. Leete. "Are they
France, England, Germany, or hun-
ger, cold, and nakedness?"
EDW ABD BJilLL.UlY
CHAPTER XVI
[ 1 ]
E
UGENE DEBS was growing old; in that winter of 1912
he passed his fifty-seventh birthday. The signs were in
his face. Even during speeches now, he sometimes wore
his gold-rimmed spectacles. The gashes across his forehead had
deepened. The crow's feet near his ~ y s met furrows rising from
the corners of his mouth. His cheeks were concave. His jaw had
come to resemble a giant bone pendulum, attached as an after-
thought to a previously finished face.
The signs were also in his mind and manner. He had been a
very sentimental young man, given to florid utterances that
tended toward ambiguity. During his middle years, from 1885 to
1908, a note of factual precision had crept into his speeches and
writings. There was a new, harsh tone. His articles in The
Magazine were buttressed by the'statistics derived from govern-
ment reports. As his life swung past the apex, the trend was in
the other direction. Once more he tended to be carried away by
his own rhetoric. All too often he was careful about the flourishes
and careless about the core. In his search for the spiritual es-
sence, he sometimes showed little regard for the exact truth. The
question is one of degree; both elements were always present,
but the change in degree was noticeable.
Even in his halcyon days, Debs was in no sense a scholar. He
was both uneducated an.d uncultured. But he usually recognized
these limitations and tried to overcome them. He freely ad-
mitted his extravagances. In 1910 during the Fred Warren de-
fense campaign, a friend in Cleveland protested against one of
Debs' speeches. Debs' reply showed a commendable amount of
humility : "Your criticism of my speech is right and I heartily
approve it. My wife, had she been present, would have thanked
you for your candor. She has often said just what you have told
me and I know she is right and you are right but there are times
317
S18 THE BENDING CROSS
when it seems impossible to keep within the bounds of calmness
and discreet expression. In discussing such corrupt judges as
Grosscup and Pollock it vexes one sorely to find decent words
with which to characterize them. And yet you are right in regard
to the effect upon the audience and I am glad you have written
just as you have."
That was in 1910. But as the years passed, Debs became more
contemptuous of careful scholarship. He came to believe that
knowledge could be acquired quickly from the condensed ver-
sions of literary and scientific classics. His oratorical style had
become automatic, and he tended to use it even in personal con-
versation. The reaction of the younger intellectuals to this
characteristic is apparent in the comment of Floyd Dell, an
editor of The Musses in 1916: "I did not like Eugene V. Debs
to talk to; he orated blandly in private conversations, taking no
particular note of whether he was talking to Tom, Dick or
Harry." Two years later, in 1918, Debs made a particularly
sweeping comment in a discussion with a young Socialist at-
torney. The attorney quickly interrupted him: "You don't
.really believe that, do you? Who do you think you're talking
to, a crowd of 500 under-fed, under-educated workingmen?"
Debs became very angry and said that he was deeply hurt by
the attorney's insinuations, thus shifting the entire argument
away from the accuracy of the original statement.
As long as he was "in general correct," Debs did not much
care if he was. wrong in the specific instance. This occasionally
led to ludicrous actions. There was in Terre Haute, for instance,
a very small, chivalrous Southern gentleman who edited a S0-
cialist newspaper. One day Debs asked the editor to stop by his
office. A friend went along with the editor. As soon as they en-
tered Debs' office, the giant Socialist leader began to talk about
seeing the editor on the street, one cold day the previous week,
without any overcoat. This was, said Debs, very unhealthy for
a middle-aged man, and he wanted the editor to have his over-
coat. The editor tried to explain that he had an overcoat already
and that he did not need another one. His protests were vain.
When the editor left that office, he was wearing Debs' overcoat.
It dragged on the floor as he walked. That did not matter to
WORLD SOCIALISM
819
Debs, who was elated to know that he had been spiritually
correct.
This was purely a procesa of self-hypnotism, of pulling the
wool over his own eyes. But there was an even more astonishing
example. Debs remained largely unconscious of what was hap-
pening within his own family. There had long been ill will be-
tween his wife and his brother. Although Kate had never been
completely persuaded of the wisdom of her husband's views, she
had been of enormous assistance. She had helped with his cor-
respondence. managed the Debs Publishing Company, enter-
tained his friends, nursed him time and again back to health. She
had never publicly complained. But the years passed, and the
millennium didnot arrive. Her husband continued to drive him-
self without mercy, and she continued to worry about his
health. Then many Socialist leaders joined the metropolitan
newspapers in saying unpleasant things about Eugene Debs.
Kate gradually began to rebel under the strain.
Her rebellion was shown in two ways. She sometimes re-
marked to small groups of Socialists that her husband was kill-
ing himself for people who did not appreciate it. She began to
be cold and formal to Socialists who called at her home. She
wanted Eugene to be more a husband and less a Socialist, to pay
some attention to his health and the family income. She also
wanted him to stop supporting his lazy brother Theodore.
Many years later, Debs' sister Emma Maillaux said: "Theo-
dore and Gene were of one flesh. They fairly breathed through
one another. Theodore was Gene's foundation. Without him
Gene's career could never have been." This was undoubtedly
true. Theodore had served his brother for three decades by 1912,
without glory or wealth. He had been adviser, private secretary.
valet, stand-in. But Kate did not appreciate the truth. She
thought that Theodore had been sponging off her husband. She
did not like the relationship whereby a third or even hall of
Eugene's salary went to his brother. This animosity was fed by
her family and by several of her friends, all wealthy women in
Terre Haute. One day soon after the completion of Theodore's
new home on Ohio Street, Kate passed by in an automobile with
Mr. and Mrs. Carl StahL Mr. Stahl, who owned a prosperous
garment factory, ironically poiI.lted to Theodore's house alia
commented: "There lives a great man. He has a fine home and
doesn't work." That was Kate's attitude too.
Theodore, for his part, heartily reciprocated this dislike. In
1897, when he was in Chicago trying to support a wife, a baby,
and the Socialist Party on a shoestring, Kate was living in her
fine home in Terre Haute. Even more than that, thought Theo-
dore, she was a drag on his brother. She was the discordant
partner, the rebel who rocked the boat of the rebels. She was, in
short, a throwback. That was Theodore's notion, but he exag-
gerated. Kate was a peculiar woman, who varied between belief
and disbelief in her husband's cause. Ignoring her contributions,
Theodore considered her more a handicap than a help. 'He oc-
casionally commented to his friends that Eugene should have
married somebody else.
Eugene Debs was actually the cause of this bitter enmity be-
tween Kate and Theodore. Also, since they were the two persons
closest to him, he was caught squarely in the middle of it. His
reaction was typical-he ignored it. There was no diminution of
his regard for either his wife or his brother. Theodore continued
as his secretary, and Kate continued as his domestic companion.
If rumors reached Debs of Theodore's angry mutterings, he
gave no sign. When Kate complained publicly about her hus-
band's wasted career, Debs used his great diplomatic talent to
guide the discussion into other channels. A witness to one of
these scenes later commented that Kate's cutting remark "just
disappeared" during Debs' conjuring act.
De bs refused to pay attention to personal animosi ties, no rna t-
ter who was involved. Also he had more important things on his
mind in May, 1913. A coal strike in the Cabin Creek district of
West Virginia was following the long-established pattern of
antilabor violence. Even Mother Jones, the almost legendary
eighty-year-old organizer for the United Mine Workers, had
been seized and thrown into a bull pen without benefit of trial.
All segments of the labor movement protested against this
wanton viciousness. The Socialist Party sent an investigating
committee to the strike zone, and Debs agreed to serve with
Victor Berger and Adolph Germer. Debs spent several weeks
WORLD SOCIALISM 821
hurling himself around West Virginia, exhorting the miners to
stand firm. When the fight was on, Debs' haziness always dis-
appeared. He urged the craft unions in the strike area to call a
general strike. If this proved ineffective, said Debs, they should
make "an appeal to force of arms." But these measures proved
unnecessary. By the middle of June every union man had been
released from jail. Debs, in his customary state of exhaustion,
returned to Terre Haute.
The Cabin Creek episode was paled, less than a month later,
by a national storm arising from Debs' defiance of social con-
vention. On July 10, 1913, newspaper readers throughout the
country thrilled to essentially the same headline in every metro-
poli tan daily:
DEBS GIVES GffiL OUTCAST A HOME
Five days earlier, Debs had learned that the daughter of an old
friend in Terre Haute had been arrested for immorality and
taken to the city jail. He promptly put on his hat and went
after her. Debs thought that the girl was merely unhappy due
to her recent divorce. She had lost her moorings; she was not
evil. And even if she truly had been a prostitute, it would not
have mattered to Debs. Hadn't he refused, as City Clerk, to
levy fines against any streetwalker? So he persuaded the au-
thorities to appoint him as temporary probation officer, and he
then took the gir1 back to his home.
Eugene Debs was so angry that he was boiling over. The
police had told the girl that she must keep off the streets or go
to the proper section of town. Debs, in a public statement, vig-
orously attacked this attitude: "Do the police mean to get
recruits for the red light district? . . . It is time for this pitiless
cruelty to stop. Why not war on the immoral people in high life
instead of persecuting this penniless girl?" AU of his friends,
said Debs, must accept the girl as a member of his own family.
The Milwaukee Leader significantly added: "Mrs. Debs, in
accordance with her invariable custom, refused to talk for
publication. It is known, however, that the girl was taken into
the Debs' home with Mrs. Debs' full accord."
Debs may have been surprised by the public acclaim that
THE BENDING CROSS
greeted his action. This was not revolution; this was charity;
several newspapers believed in charity. Scores of editors who had
been excoriating Debs for years now found occasion to say a
kind word. Typical was the headline in the Houston Chranicle:
'Debs Challenges Christianity:' When it came to a verbal de-
fense of Christianity, the Chranicle was not found wanting. But
the task of supporting the girl and re-orienting her life was left
to Debs. He was not found wanting either.
Alter he had secured a new job for the girl in a strange city,
Debs felt the need of a long vacation. He decided to go to Estes
Park. Colorado, and he remained there for more than two
months. While on vacation he made an important decision. He
would retire. He was still writing two or three articles each
week for the Appeal to Reaaan, but it wasn't the same now that
Wayland was dead. He had just finished paying off the twenty-
two-thousand-dollar debt of the American Railway Union-it
had taken eighteen years-so he was freed from that self-im-
posed financial pressure. And Kate wanted him to give up the
lecture platform and stay in Terre Haute. The idea was e s o n ~
able; they were coming into the tWilight of their lives. Debs
could still sell all of his articles to the Socialist newspapers;
money would be no problem. He wrote a letter of resignation
to Fred Warren, ending a frolicsome and fruitful partnership in
socialism.
By Christmas Debs was back in Terre Haute. He was in a
mellow mood, and so was Kate. When a woman reporter from
the Terre Haute Post appeared for an interview, she was gra-
ciously admitted by Kate into a scene of domestic happiness.
Looking back over his career, Debs thought an injustice had
been done. "She has always been my inspiration:' he said of
Kate. "If I have done the least thing toward the betterment of
the world, it has been due to her. She has always kept in the
background and it isn't fair. I say it isn't fair."
ButKatewould nothave it so; "I have always told him that it
was enough for him to be in the front. I prefer it that way."
Debs would not be diverted from his main point: ''She has
been a loyal companion through thick and thin. She has never
faltered for a moment and God knows we have had some strug-
WORLD SOCIALISM
gles in the past twenty years. We have been hounded and perse-
cuted and she has -stood for the right through it all . . .0'
Then Debs began to drag out the family heirlooms. He
proudly exhibited a meerschaum pipe which had belonged to his
father (he smoked it only on Daniel's birthday each year). A
cup and saucer, both monogrammed in gold, had belonged to
Nathaniel Hawthorne; they had been presented by Hawthorne's
granddaughter after she heard Debs make a speech. But Debs'
favorite possession was a battered tin candlestick which had
lighted John Brown's last hours in Harper's Ferry. In speaking
of John Brown, Debs was always moved to oratory: "He used
this in his cabin that terrible night he was captured Imagine
the flickering candle glow over that terrible scene. One of John
Brown's sons dead on the floor, while the father with one hand
on the pulse of another dying, clutched a gun in his other."
Just one political note crept into that entire interview, in-
serted, surprisingly, by Kate: " .. some people say that S0-
cialism will break up the home. Why, one divorce is granted now
where two marriage licenses are given. When our economic con-
ditions are made what they should be and women cease marrying
to be provided for because their wages do not enable them to
live as human beings should, then will the divorce question be
solved. Marriage then will be founded on its only true basis.
love."
Wha t did Mr. Debs believe to be the major question before
the American people? Mr. Debs did not say. What did Mr. Debs
think of the chances of war? Mr. Debs did not say. The readers
of the Terre Haute P08t were left completely unenlightened for
another six weeks. When Debs did break through the veil of
silence that shrouded his mind, he c;hose an unusual subject.
On February !l4, 1914, he wrote for the Post a long article on
municipal corruption and efficiency. Stil1 angry about the atti-
tude of the police toward prostitutes, Debs asked why the au-
thorities did not get after the big lawbreakers. He found his.
answer, not in the natural depravity of mankind, but in the
workings of the capitalist system: "Men are naturally honest
and the worst of them will be straight instead of crooked, and
clean instead of corrupt, when it is as easy and pays as well to
8M THE BENDING CROSS
be straight and clean, as i t now does to be crooked and corrupt."
As Debs issued his statements about Nathaniel Hawthorne's
teacup and municipal reform, the impression grew that he was
about finished. Some of his Socialist colleagues had long thought
that his mind was going soft; they now began to think that he
was growing soft all over. The word got around that old Gene
Debs didn't have a good fight left in him. The word, as it turned
out, was wrong.
[ fJ ]
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION of 1912 had been remarkable in
many ways: all four candidates had wrapped themselves in the
mantle of liberalism; the Bull Moose nominee had polled more
votes than the Republican incumbent; the Socialist electorate
had approached the million mark, But most remarkable of all
had been the indifference shown to the overwhelming issue, the
threat of war. Foreign policy had scarcely been discussed in the
entire campaign. Not even Eugene Debs had been aware of the
imminence of conflict.
This was, on Debs' part, a serious but temporary lapse. As
early as 1907, the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart
had called on the workers of all nations to stand fum against the
war drive and "to take advantage of the opportunities offered
by the economic and political crises brought about by the war
by arousing public sentiment to hasten the overthrow of capital-
ist class rule." The last suggestion was added at the initiative of
Nikolai Lenin, who headed the delegation of Russian Bolsheviks.
At the International Socialist Congress of 1910, Debs' old friend
Keir Hardie had proposed an international general strike it
actual fighting began.
The American socialists paid sporadic attention to these reso-
lutions. The Denver Post, in 1909, charged that the socialists
were circulating "seditious documents" in the Army and Navy.
Two years later the assistant secretary of war asked for legis-
lation in every state to provide military training in the high
schools. At this point Debs entered the discussion. War, de-
clared the Socialist leader, was "the supreme crime of twentieth
century civilization." He urged the Socialist Party to make a
WORLD SOCIALISM
frontal assault "against war and all that makes for war." He
then neglected his own advice for nearly three years.
In February, 1914, Debs abandoned his plan to retire. His re-
tirement had lasted the usual two months. This change of front
was inevitable; he just was not adapted to a leisurely life. His
friends did not believe that he really wanted to sit .around Terre
Haute and write an occasional blast at the local politicans.
Among these friends were Kate Richards O'Hare and her hus-
band, Frank P. O'Hare. Kate O'Hare had long been the most
prominent and most effective womaJl Socialist in the country.
Her success and prominence were due in large part to the be-
hind-the-scenes activity of her husband, a brilliant organizer
who had worked with Debs during the Moyer-Haywood cam-
paign. In 1912 Kate O'Hare had become a lecturer for the
Natianal Rip-Saw, a Socialist monthly in St. Louis. Her husband
Frank was named editor. In order to round out his staff, Phil
Wagner, the publisher, offered Eugene Debs a job lecturing and
writing editorials for the publication. Much to. his wife's cha-
grin. Debs agreed.
Debs had returned to active duty just in time. War in Europe
seemed so near that the National Committee of the Party issued
a manifesto declaring their "opposition to this and all other
wars." But when .war actually threatened the United States, the
chosen enemy was not Germany but Mexico. Just a few days
after the Party manifesto, some American sQldiers were arrested
in Tampico. This minor incident nearly precipitated an open
conflict with Mexico, where the unsettled political situation had
been publicized as a standing menace to American lives and
property. President Wilson demanded an apology to repair the
damage to our national honor. To enforce this demand, and to
forestall the rumored arrival of a German ship bearing arms for
the Mexican government, Wilson sent the marines ashore at
Vera Cruz. We had invaded Mexico.
Eugene Debs leaped into print in the Rip-Saw. Our soldiers
should never have been in Mexico in the first place, he declared;
they were there for the sole purpose of protecting the ill-gotten
property of the Standard Oil Company. Instead of sending more
marines to crush the peons "into hopeless slavery and degra-
T.HE BENDING CROSS
dation," Wilson should immediately withdraw all troops from
Mexico. American citizens who chose to live and invest their
money in foreign countries should do so at their own risk, not
at the risk of oUr soldiers' lives.
Thus did Eugene Debs begin his crusade against war. Super-
ficially, he seemed badly qualified to lead such a campaign. He
had never set foot on any soil beyond the continent of North
America. He was unable to read a single foreign language; thirty
years earlier he had been competent in French and German but
he had forgotten both. He was in no sense a careful student of
international affairs. Actually, however, these considerations
were irrelevant. Debs' basic attitude hinged, not on diplomatic
subtleties, but on broad socialist principles. He thought that our
foreign military adventures were being undertaken in the in-
terests of the same capitalist clique that ruled America. That
was all he needed to know. His attitude toward the developing
war depended on happenings in the United States.
This emphasis was apparent from the very beginning. At the
same time that our troops landed in Mexico, there were two
dramatic strikes in the United States. During a hard-fought
battle in the Michigan copper country late in 1918, the strikers
gave a Christmas party for their children in a schoolhouse at
Calumet. When the hall was filled with hundreds of holiday
revellers, an unknown person shouted "Fire." Panic swept
through the hall. Everybody bolted for the door. But the doors
had been barricaded by the same unknown person. Wave after
wave of hysterical children and adults beat against the barred
doors. Seventy-two lives were lost. The copper miners refused
all offers of help, and marched cold-faced to bury their children
in a common grave.
The tragedy at Ludlow, Colorado, was even more deliberate
and wanton. A strike by the Western Federation of Miners be-
came an armed battle. When militia r ~ sent in to escort strike-
breakers through the picket lines, the miners protested by de-
serting the town of Ludlow. They set up their own tent colony
in a neighboring meadow. On April 20, 1914, the militia raked
the colony with machine-gun fire. They then burned the tents
to the ground. No warning had been given. This brutality had
WORLD SOCIALISM
Si7
tragic results. Two women and eleven children were burned to
death.
Here, indisputably, was a situation in which Eugene Debs be-
lieved in violence. His article in the International Socialiat Re-
view urged the miners to raise a Gunmen Defense Fund, "suffi- '
cient to provide each member with the latest high-power rifle,
the same as used by corporation gunmen, and 500 rounds of
cartridges." U the government was unable or unWilling to pro-
vide protection, the miners had a solemn duty to protect them-
selves. The company guards, said Debs, were "hired assassins"
and "professional man-killers": "You should have no more
compunction in killing them than' if they were so ma.ny mad-
dogs or rattlesnakes that menaced your homes and your com-
munity." His suggestion of counterviolence was made "ad-
visedly" and he held himself responsible for "every word of it,"
a declaration that was sustained by the gravity of his closing
words:
It remains only to be said that we stand for peace, and that
we are unalterably opposed to violence and bloodshed if by any
possible means, short of absolute degradation and self-abase-
ment, these can be prevented. We believe in law, the law that
applies equally to all and is impartially administered, and we
prefer reason infinitely to brute force.
But when the law fails, and in fact, becomes the bulwark of
crime a.nd oppression, then an appeal to force is not only morally
justified, but becomes a patriotic duty. '
The miners in Colorado were 'employed by a corporation of
which John D. Rockefeller was the directing force. The finan-
cier's son had neither apologies nor regrets about the destruction
of the tent colony. As he told a Congressional committee:"U I
had failed in my duty, I would resign, but my conscience utterly
acquits me." Although he may have questioned the morals of
John D., Jr., President Wilson sent Federal troops into Colorado
to protect the property of John D., Sr. It so happened that
Rockefeller also had a large interest in the oil fields that our
marines were protecting in Mexico. In the eyes of Eugene Debs,
the American government was little else than an armed guard
for capitalist investments. He did not hesitate to say so.
THE BENDING CROSS
I t is one thing, ye uniformed slaves, to fight for your country
and another thing to fight for Rockefeller's oil derricks.
You never had a country to fight for and never will have so
much as an inch of one as long as you are fool enough to make a
target of your bodies for the profit and glory of your masters.
Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own
corpses and there will never be another war on the face of the
earth.
That same month, August of 1914, the dispute with Mexico
was paled by the beginning of the war in Europe. Debs advo-
cated complete neutrality, in fact as well as name. In his opinion
the bloody con:Bict was the outcome of fifty years of commercial
competition among the capitalist nations. The ruling class in
each country had the same goal: "to extend the domination of
their exploitation, to increase their capacity for robbery, and to
multiply their ill-gotten riches."With all of the colonial coun-
tries divided up among the imperialist powers, any attempt at
re-division must result in war. The workers of the world, Debs
concluded, had no interest in the bloody conflict. Since the war
was an inevitable result of capitalism, the great task of the
Socialists was to explain its causes and so prepare the working-
men for "the impending social revolution!'
Through the summer and autumn of 1914, through the winter
and spring of 1915, Debs continued his tireless activity in behalf
of the peace movement. He made a broad sweep across the Mid-
west. He appeared at the Socialist encampments of Oklahoma
and Texas, inspiring many men to bring their families a hundred
miles in a wagon to hear his fiery message. He stormed his way
down the West Coast. Week after week, he Wrote trenchant,
biting editorials in the N ationol Rip-Saw.
And, all the while, the United States was moving toward
armed intervention. A :Bood of war orders from the Allies had
lifted America out of the depression which had gripped its in-
dustries for more than two years. American citizens continued
to cross the Atlantic on British ships, and a momentary crisis
followed the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915. President
Wilson placed the National Guard on a war footing in the in-
terests of "national security." The first Allied War Loan in the
WORLD SOCIALISM
autumn of 1915 effected a practical merger of the American and
British economies. Step by step, foot by foot, Debs tried to stem
this steady drift toward involvement in the European con:Bict.
Every move toward American preparedness brought forth from
Debs the caustic comment: "Any nation that today PRE-
PARES for war INCITES war and slaughter."
Debs did not draw any fine distinctions between the different
groups supporting the war. Capitalist or socialist, instigators or
perpetuators, he struck viciously at all of them. The entire war
could have been prevented, he wrote in the Rip-Saw, if the
socialists in every country had stood by their principles. The
Bolsheviks of Russia, alone in the belligerent countries, had
waged a firm struggle to halt the bloody massacre. Of the hun-
dred socialist deputies in the German Reichstag, only Karl
Liebknecht had voted against war credits for the government.
In France, in England, in Italy, the former socialists had be-
become nationalists and had followed their rulers into war. This
insane nationalism had to be stopped, had to be rolled back,
wrote Eugene Debs in November, 1914:
We socialists are not wanting in genuine patriotism but we
are deadly hostile to the fraudulent species which is "the last
refuge of the scoundrel" and which prompts every crook and
grafter and every blood-sucking vampire to wrap his reeking
carcass in the folds of the national :Bag that he may carry on his
piracy and plunder in the name of "patriotism. . . ."
Patriotism, like brotherhood. must be international and all-
embracing TO BE AT ALL.
Even within the Socialist Party there was considerable op-
position to Debs' attitude. At the time of the Lusitania crisis
the National Committee issued a :Baming proclamation: "We
call upon the workers of America to oppose war and all agitation
for war by the exercise of all the power in their command." But
this antiwar position was seriously compromised by the failure
of the National Committee to d e n ~ u n e the war-socialists of
Europe. As late as May, 1915, the Socialist leaders in America
piously declared: "With every power at their command the
socialists of all nations have worked to prevent it." This state-
THE BENDING CROSS
ment, as Eugene Debs well mew, had no relevance to the
actions of the prowar socialists of Germany, France, and Eng-
land.
Nor was this an. In December of 1915 Charles Edward Ru.&-
sen, whom the Hi1lquit forces had tried to nominate for Presi-
dent in 1912, declared himself in favor of preparedness. There
was, said Russell, imminent danger of invasion by Germany and
Japan, the leaders of world despotism. Somewhat similar views
were held by Upton Sinclair, the Socialist novelist, who had
been horrified by German militarism. Sinclair, like Russen
t
be-
lieved that the urgent necessity was the defeat of Germany. He
incorporated this attitude in a which he mailed to
Debs, hoping that it would be endorsed by the Socialist leader.
On the contrary,. it met with a summary rejection. ''Dear
Comrade Sinclair," Debs replied, "1 regret not being able to
sign the document as requested, for the reason that I do not
coincide with the views therein set forth. Any kind of an
army that may be. organized . . under the present govern-
ment will be controlled by the ruling class, and its chief function
will be to keep the working class in slavery. I have not the least
fear of invasion or attack from without. The invasion and atbwk
I want the workers to prepare to resist and put an end to comes
from within, from our own predatory plutocracy right here at
home."
do not know of any foreign buccaneers," wrote Debs in
memory of the Ludlow massacre, "that could come nearer skin-
ning the American workers to the bone than is now being done
by the Rockefellers and their pirate pals. The workers have no
country to fight for. It belongs to the capitalists and plutocrats.
Let them worry over its defence. and when they declare wars as
they and they alone do, let them abO go out and slaughter one
another on the battlefields;'
As GerIIl8;ny continued her submarine attacks on Allied ship-
ping, an increasing number of Socialists began to support the
preparedness campaign in the United States. But these con-
versions had little effect on Eugene Debs. Even if he had been
completely alone in his views. it seems certain that he would
WORLD SOCIALISM
SSl
ha ve remained "true to himself.)' His conscience had guided his
hand in when he left the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fire-
men; it had ruled in 1905 when he joined the Industrial Workers
of the World; it was still dominant in 1915. So Debs persisted
in his peace crusade, under the aegis of Thomas Paine, Wenden
Phillips, Charles Sumner, Abraham Lincoln, and John Peter
Altgeld, all of whom had opposed the unjust wars of their own
times. When asked whether he was opposed to an wars, Debs
gave an answer that foreswore evasion: "I am not a capitalist
soldier; I am a proletarian revolutionist. . . I am opposed to
every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and
that is the war of the social revolution. In that war
I am prepared to fight in any way the ruling class may make
necessary, even to the barricades. That is where I stand and
where I believe the Socialist Party stands, or ought to stand, on
the question of war."
Debs envisioned a three-fold program to make his attitude
effective: unity of the American Marxists, reconstitution of the
Socialist International, formation of a powerful and class-
conscious labor movement in the United States. There had been
abortive moves, for more than a decade, to unite the Socialist
Party and the Socialist Labor Party. Debs now set himseli to
this task in earnest. He wrote a lengthy laudation of Daniel
DeLeon for the SLP journal. He tirelessly emphasized the
solute necessity for joint action against the war danger. Finally,
in 1916, this agitation bore fruit; committees from the rival
parties began negotiations for a merger.
The Socialist International, thought Debs, must spearhead
the campaign for friendship among the peoples of an countries.
He was painfully conscious that the International had failed in
the hour of crisis. A new International, he wrote in July, 1915,
must "utterly outlaw war and declare against the abomination
under any and all circumstances." Thus far he was in perfect
accord with the leaders of his Party. But he broke sharply with
the supporters of Hillquit and Berger in his additional state-
ment: "those socialists who prefer nationalism to inter-
nationalism must never be given another chance to betray and
THE BENDING CROSS
destroy the movement." That was Debs' program in 1915, a
purge of the war-socialists of Europe from positions of power in
the Socialist International.
Debs' third suggestion, and the one which received most of his
personal attention, was the complete rebuilding of the labor
movement. He recognized that this task could never be ac-
complished by the IWW, or the Wobblies as Daniel DeLeon had
called them. Although he admired the militant spirit. of the
IWW and its leadership of the strikes at Paterson and Lawrence,
Debs had become increasingly impatient with their tactics.
Finally, in 1914, a group of Wobblies dynamited the Western
Federation of Miners' hall in Butte, Montana. That was going
too far. For the first time, Debs issued a bitter, unqualified blast
at Bill Haywood and his associates: "It is vain to talk about the
IWW .. Let all who oppose political action and favor sab-
otage and the program of anarchism join that faction."
The IWW could not rejuvenate the labor movement. Samuel
Gompers and his colleagues in the AFL, who had supported each
step of the preparedness campaign, obviously would not do it.
How then was it to be done? Debs' projected answer was a new
labor federation, based on the WFM and the United Mine
Workers, which would promptly begin organizing "drives in the
rapidly expanding war industries. He also advocated a deter-
mined attempt within the local craft unions to wrest control of
the AFLfrom the hands of Gompers. As early as August, 1910,
Debs had expressed this sa.me program: "we must bore from
within and without, the industrial unionists within the old
unions working together in perfect harmony with the industrial
unionists upon the outside engaged in laying the foundation
. . . of the new revolutionary economic organization "
Through the summer and autumn of 1915, through the winter
and spring of 1916, Eugene Debs was one of the handful of
prominent men who opposed the preparedness torrent. Although
William Jennings Bryan, Jane Addams, Senators LaFollette and
Norris, continued to battle for true neutrality, their voices
seemed weak indeed compa.red to the anti-German barrage in
the newspapers. And yet Debs found a surprising amount of
support all over the country. On June 11, 1915, he wrote to
WORLD SOCIALIS M
Frank O'Hare from Garrison, North Dakota: "If you could
only be here and see this demonstration I . . . The old ware-
house was packed as soon as the doors were open and hundreds
couldn't get in. . . . The farmers and their families have come
from a hundred miles around--and they are red to the core."
More than seven thousand people came to the meeting in
Chisholm, Minnesota. A hundred men joined the Party in
Williston, North Dakota, when Debs spoke there. The Socialist
leader had "a wonderful meeting" at Ann Arbor, Michigan, the
home of the state university. "It was extremely cold, below
zero," he wrote to Max Ehrmann, "and yet the Auditorium was
packed and overflowing and many had to be turned away."
In the early spring of 1916, soon after Debs' speech in Ann
Arbor, attention was again diverted from the European war.
Pancho Villa, the Mexican bandit, crossed the border with a
hundred men and raided the little town of Columbus, New
Mexico. President Wilson despatched the American Army into
Mexico in pursuit of Villa. Once more there was danger of war
on the American continent. When the news reached Debs, he
was traveling from Pittsburgh to Cleveland on a lecture tour
for the Rip-Saw. His comment appeared in the Akron Times:
"I want the people of America to understand that if we have
war with Mexico, our boys will not be fighting for their country.
They'll be fighting for the Wall Street interests that own four
billion dollars' worth of property in Mexico for which they paid
not one hundredth part. That's all there is to this Mexican
trouble."
These outspoken pronouncements by Debs met with extreme
disapproval among the Socialist leaders. Even Debs failed to
recognize the growing breach until February, 1916, when the
leaders of a strike in New Jersey were sent to jail for contempt
of court. Debs wrote one of his unbridled attacks on the judici-
ary and, as a matter of course, mailed it to the New York Call
for publication. The editor returned it, saying that it might in-
volve the paper in a libel suit. Debs had seldom been as dis-
gusted as he was on this occasion. Hadn't he helped to raise
money to launch the Call in 1905? Was this an attempt by
Morris Hillquit to punish the Party's mavericks? Was the Call
8M
THE BENDING CROSS
., '<'T'h ."
afraid 0 f trouble with the government!" ~ ere are tImes,
Debs said contemptuously, "when a libel suit, or the threat of
one against a revolutionary paper is the very thing that it
needs." The article finally appeared, not in the Call, but-in the
Appeal to Reason. . .
The right-wing Socialists had tried in 1908, and agam In 19U,
to deny the Presidential nomination to Debs. Perhaps they
could have done so in 1916, but they were unexpectedly re-
lieved of the problem. Debs rejected all attempts to draft him
for the job. Doubtless Kate's wishes, his own ill health ~ d ~
desire to step aside for a younger man, all played a part In this
decision. The nominations went to a pair of journalists, Allen
L. Benson and George R. Kirkpatrick, who were chosen by a
referendum vote of the membership. For the first time since the
formation of the Socialist Party, Eugene Debs was not to be the
standard-bearer in a national campaign.
[ 3 ]
DEBS' HOPES to shirk an official designation by the Party were
quickly frustrated. In spite of his plea of ill health, the Socialists
of Terre Haute nominated him for Congress in April, 1916.
Debs was completely b"apped. His statement after the 1912
election had proudly predicted: "It is entirely possible that in
four years more the Socialist party may sweep the nation."
That day had alTived, and he had refused responsibility for the
national campaign. Could he similarly betray the confidence of
his local comrades? Those were the terms in which the problem
appeared to Debs, who had repeatedly sworn that he would
carry out any task the Party assigned him. No choice was in-
volved; Debs felt honor-bound to make the race.
First, however. the national platform had to be settled. Since
the Party had held no -convention, policy questions were in the
hands of the National Committee, which had shown a definite
tendency to straddle certain problems. Debs set himself the task
of bringing both clarity and determination to the Party's cam-
paign. "The issue," he wrote in August, "is socialism against
capitalism, imperialism and militarism. The hordes of hell are
WORLD SOCIALISM
all against us, but the hosts of justice are on our side. We can
win and must. Comrades, I am counting on you, each of you,
as if our very lives were at stake--and they are." To emphasize
his uncompromising position, Debs again lashed out at the
right-wing leaders:
There.has been a tendency in our party for some years, and it
has been quite marked, to obscure the class character of our
party to make it the more acceptable to the middle class, and
on this account many . working-class revolutionists .
have deserted the party.
Another and perhaps the principle cause of defretion and de-
sertion from the party ranks has been the weak, evasive, if not
cowardly attitude of the party toward economic organization.
There has been and is now in certain quarters mortal fear that
the party may by some act or utterance give offense to the
Gompers A.F. of L. machine ....
I am not foolish enough to contend for an instant that the
Socialist party should meddle in the management of union
affairs but I am quite sure that the party . . . can only main-
tain its own integrity by standing staunchly and uncompromis-
ingly ... for the industrial organization of the workers [and}
against the principles of craft unionism .
With the urgency born of desperation. Debs brought this
program to the voters of the Fifth Congressional District. He
worked in constant awareness that the American people were
knocking on the door to the charnel-house in Europe. Con-
stantly there flickered in his mind the vision of shell-torn fields,
of wrecked cities and tortured hearts. of maimed men and
starving babies. of the wanton brutality that is war. At the end
of this insane horror. Debs rou1d see no shining future. The
public enemy, in all truth, was not Germany, but hunger, cold,
and nakedness.
Never had a Debs' campaign risen to greater emotional in-
tensity. He worked 88 if the fate of the world rested in his two
hands. During the first two weeks of September he gave .filty-
five speeches, moving over the rutted roads in a Model T tour-
ing car. In ea.ch .community this Ford drove up to the town
plaza and Debs c1ambered out on the sidewalk to give his speech.
With his arms waving frantically above the audience, he vowed
stern opposition to the agents of capitalism and war. As the
crowd grew larger, he jumped up on the hood of the car and con-
tinued his stirring indictment of the munition-makers. Coal
miners, housewives, merchants-many of them yielded to this
fervent plea for peace and socialism.
Debs was receiving a great concentration of support. The eyes
of socialists throughout the world were focussed on the Con-
gressional campaign in Indiana, where the issues were so clearly
drawn. Each day brought unsolicited contributions from New
Zealand, from Alaska, from the Orient. Several speakers from
foreign countries, including James Larkin of Ireland and Mad-
ame KoUontai of Russia, appeared in the district. In every small
town the Socialists sold huge red feathers bearing the tag:
"Feather your nest. Vote for Debs." One of Debs' close friends,
the Rev. J. H. Hollingsworth. edited a booklet, Eugene V. Deb8:
What HiB Neighbor8 Say of Him, which was distributed by the
thousands of copies. By election day, one and a half million
pieces of Socialist literature had been spread broadcast through-
out western Indiana.
Nor was the opposition idle. Both the Republicans and Demo-
crats poured money and orators into the fight. Then, as the
(;Rmpaign neared its climax, the Democrats made a desperate
move. With the open co-operation of the AFL they sent Mother
Mary Jones on a tour of the mining towns in the area. Mother
Jones had devoted her life to the struggles of the coal miners.
Debs had always considered her as one of the heroes of the
American labor movement. "No other soldier in the revolution-
ary cause," he had written in 1907, "has a better right to recog-
nition ... than has Mother Jones;' In 1918, when the fearless
woman was imprisoned for her activities in the Cabin Creek
strike, Debs had hurried to her side. Now, a scant three years
later. she was advising her beloved miners to vote against
the Socialist Party. Whatever Debs may have thought, he said
absolutely nothing.
While this battle was raging in the lecture halls and town
squares, a truly gripping drama, about which Debs knew noth-
ing, was being enacted in his own home. Kate Debs had heard
recurrent gossip that she did not love her husband enough to go
WORLD SOCIALISM
887
to meetings with him. To some extent this was true. But one
day when Debs was giving a speech in the street, a spectator
was startled at the sight of Kate Debs, standing on a bank and
waving her hands to attract her husband's attention. Such
incidents were either unknown to or ignored by the gossip club.
The ugly rumors went on, until Kate Debs broke down under
the strain. A neighbor found her one afternoon crying in her
anguish. Then Kate took her stand publicly.
In the final Socialist parade, held the Saturday night before
the election, Kate and Eugene Debs marched arm in arm at the
head of the column. The boisterous files stretched for fifteen
blocks through the streets of Terre Haute. The air was filled
with red flags and the smoke from countless torches. Gigantic
signs called on the voters to speak out against the war. The
parade swept hilariously onward to the Grand Opera House.
which proved far too small to hold the crowd. Debs hastened
through his address, then he and Kate hurried on to other
meetings at the Armory and the Coliseum. These buildings also
were filled with throngs of cheering, ecstatic admirers. Deb's
hopes soared high as he witnessed the popular enthusiasm of the
closing days of his campaign.
Four days later they fell sharply. Far from sweeping the na-
tion, as Debs had predicted, the Socialist vote had dropped more
than three hundred thousand since 1912. Since the vote for
Benson and Kirkpatrick was artificially swollen by many paci-
fist and pro-German ballots, the result could only be termed a
severe setback. In Terre Haute Debs, by more than trebling the
Party's vote of 1914, had run ahead of the Democratic iri-
cumbent, but the Republican won an easy victory. Confident
that he had been "true to himself," Debs was not upset by his
failure. Probably he had realized from the beginning that vic-
tory was impossible. He now had only one comment: Blessed
are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed."
In that crucial campaign of 1916, Debs again found sanction
in his early beliefs. When he gazed at the huge picture of Karl
Marx above his desk he actually saw the face of Victor Hugo.
When he read the novels of Hugo he thought about the doc-
trines of Marx. One night at a meeting in Parke County Debs
THE BENDING CROSS
furiously attacked the capitalist warmakers. But he talked
softly to his campaign manager during the long trip back to
Terre Haute. As he puffed contentedly at his pipe, Debs medi-
tated about the meaning of us Miae'fables, with its message of
redemption through brotherhood.
[ J. )
THROUGHOUT the winter of 1916, as the country rushed toward
war, Eugene Debs was held inactive by recurrent attacks of the
grippe. From his home in Terre Haute he watched the final
disintegration of his plans for peace. The negotiations for a
merger of the Socialist Party and the Socialist Labor Party
ended in extreme bitterness. The Socialist International could
not be reconstituted during the war: the Bolsheviks of Russia
were in prison or exile; the leader of the antiwar socialists of
France had been assassinated; the antiwar socialists of both
England and Germany were in prison. Most American working-
men had fully accepted the preparedness program of the AFL.
The economy of the United States had become inextricably
tied to the war effort of the Allies. Skilled worlanenwere draw-
ing large salaries from the munitions plants .. The prices of wheat
and cotton were booming on the world market. Corporation
profits soared to unprecedented heights. Wall Street had engi-
neered gigantic war loans to the English and French govern-
ments. Step by step, month by month, American neutrality had
. been converted into a mere word. Then, on February 1, 1917.
Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare against all
shipping, and President Wilson promptly broke oft! all diplo-
matic relations. .
A t the very moment ilia t the German ambassador was being
handed his passport, both Kate and Eugene Debs were suffering
from serious cases of the grippe. Before Debs had recovered,
word arrived from Helena, Montana, that one of Kate's sisters
had died and her body was being shipped to Terre Haute for
burial. So that month of February hurtled onward; war with
Gel'II!aD.y became ever closer; and Eugene Debs was bound in a
straitjacket of sickness and personal sorrow. When he became
WORLD SOCIALISM 389
able to leave Terre Haute, Debs' first action showed a startling
detachment from the growing crisis. Frank Harris, an English
socialist who had just become editor of Pearson's Magazine,
hired Debs as a regular monthly contributor. While the immi-
nent promise of war hung over the face of the land, Debs sub.-
mitted lengthy accounts of his friendships with Robert Ingersoll
and James Whitcomb Riley.
This mood, however, Boon passed. In early March Debs began
a tour of the Eastern states. Recognizing that the United States
was truly poised on the brink of the European crater, he fiercely
attacked Wilson's pleas for national unity. "There is much talk
at the present time," he said, "of standing by the president. I
am willing to stand by the president if he stands for the things
I want, but when I look at the gang that stands behind the
president, I know it isn't my crowd." This was not a war for
national defense, screamed Debs, but a war for capitalist profits.
The working men had no true interest in the murderous business.
As Debs swept eastward into New York City, he was invading
the very center of the preparedness sentiment. Yet two thou-
sand persons crowded in to Cooper Union to hear his speech, and
police were needed to disperse another two thousand who milled
in the streets after the doors were closed. Debs did not disap-
point his audience. In his most fiery tones, he proposed a nation-
wide general strike if, Congress declared war. This idea was far
from new. Jack London had used it in his novel, The Iron Heel,
as far back as 1908. A similar proposal had been complacently
adopted by the International Socialist Congress of uno. But,
as the war' began, Jack London and most socialists of Europe
had become jingo nationalists. Debs had removed their sug-
gestion from the realm of theory and offered it as a concrete
program.
The program, as Debs well knew, had no chance of success.
Just six days after he spoke at Cooper Union, a joint conference
of the AFL and the Railway Brotherhoods issued a solemn
declaration: "Despite all our endeavors and hopes, should our
country be drawn into the maelstrom of the European conflict,
we . . offer our services to our country in every field of ac-
tivity . . . and call upon our fellow workers and fellow citizens
THE BENDING CROSS
to give like service." It made little difference that Daniel
Tobin, president of the Teamsters, charged that Samuel Gomp-
ers had controlled this conference so tightly that the other
were "not allowed to change a word." The leaders of
labor had approved the program of Wall Street and the
ministration.
For Eugene Debs, there was nothing more to be done to block
a declaration of war. The scene shifted to Washington. where a
handful of Senators were filibustering the armed-ships bill.
These dissenters were ostracized by their colleagues, denounced
as traitors in the newspapers, flayed by President Wilson. This
is not strange; Senator George W. Norris was voicing the con-
victions of Eugene Debs when he declared: "We are going into
war upon the command of gold. . . . I feel that we are about
to put a dollar sign on the American Hag." The words went un-
heard.
CHAPTER XVII
[ 1 J
O
N APRIL 7,1917, the day after the declaration of war,
the Socialist Party met in emergency convention at St.
Louis, Missouri. Planter's Hotel was filled with 198 o ~
cialists who had come to decide the Party's position on the war.
Through four heated days the Committee on War and Milita-
rism wrangled about a resolution. On the fifth day they appeared
before the convention and Morris Hillquit began to read the
majority report:
The Socialist Party of the United States in the present grave
crisis reaffirms its allegiance to the principle of internationalism
and working class solidarity the world over, and proclaims its
unalterable opposition to the war just declared by the govern-
ment of the United States. . . .
The mad orgy of death which is now convulsing unfortunate
Europe was caused by the conflict of capitalist interests in the
European countries.
In each of these countries the workers were oppressed and ex-
ploited. They produced enormous wealth, but the bulk of it was
withheld from them by the owners of the industries. .
The capitalist class of each country was forced to look for
foreign markets to dispose of the accumulated "surplus"
wealth ...
The efforts of the capitalists of all leading nations were, there-
fore, centered upon the domination of the world markets. Im-
perialism became the dominant note in the politics of Europe .
. ; . This led to the mad rivalry of armament ... The ghastly
war in Europe was not caused by an accidental event, nor by
the policy or institutions of any single nation. It was the logical
outcome of the competitive capitalist system ....
Our entrance into the European war was instigated by the
predatory capitalists of the United States who boast of the
enormous profits of seven billion dollars from the manufacture
and sale of munitions and war supplies and from the exportation
of American foodstuffs and other necessaries .... We brand
the declaration of war by our government as a crime against the
people of the United States and against the nations of the world.
341
84:l THE ~ E N I N G CROSS
A more subdued antiwar report received only thirty-one votes;
a prowar report only five votes; the majority report read by
Hillquit was supported by 80 per cent of the delegates. When
the majority report was submitted to a national referendum of
the membership, it received an even more overwhelming vote.
The Socialist Party had taken its stand.
But the appearance of monolithic unity was deceptive. A
number of warring groups had agreed to the majority report:
the Christian pacifists who opposed all force and violence, pos-
sibly a few pro-German delegates, the reform elements led by
Morris Hillquit, and the revolutionary left wing. This left wing
had no relation to that which had existed during the first decade
of the century. Bill Haywood had been recalled from the N a-
tional Executive Committee in 1913 for violation of the "sabo-
tage" amendment adopted the previous year, and he had soon
led the anarcho-syndicalists out of the Party. The new revolu-
tionary faction had developed since 1914 on the basis of opposi-
tion to the war and adherence to working-class internationalism.
The dominance of the war issue had stimulated a rapid growth
of the Party's foreign-language federations, and the Russian
democratic revolution of March, 1917, further accelerated this
trend. These groups, together with the state organizations of
Ohio, Michigan. and Washington, now held a majority of the
left-wingers.
At the St. Louis convention the left wing recognized that the
majority report was subject to a va.riety of interpretations.
Determined to destroy forever the influence of Morris HiDquit
and Victor Berger, whom they completely distrusted. they tried
to enlist the support of Eugene Debs. Their spokesman, Charles
E. Ruthenberg of Ohio. telephoned Debs in Terre Haute and
urged him to come to St. Louis. Debs refused; not even the war
crisis could persuade him to attend a convention. But Ruthen-
berg was not satisfied. One night he loaded two cars with dele-
gates and drove the hundred and fifty miles to Terre Haute.
The trip was made in vain. Debs absolutely refused to ta.ke part
in the St. Louis deliberations. He had already stated his atti-
tude; now it was a matter for the delegates to decide.
The next twelve months, for Eugene Debs. were a time of re-
WORLD SOCIALISM 848
straint, and hesitation, and endless suffering. The party to
which he had devoted his life proved to be indeed a frail barrier
to the war hysteria. At the first critical test in its history, three
important groups had deserted the American radical movement.
Dozens of capable publicists, who had controlled the Party
since its formation, now became war patriots. John' Spargo.
A. M. Simons, Phelps Stokes and his wife Rose Pastor Stokes,
Charles Edward Russell, Harry SIobodin, William English WaIl-
ing-these had all been important names in the history of the
Socialist Party. By their mass secession they disrupted and
wrecked the Party organization.
Second, those trade-union leaders who were Socialists hastily
complied with the war program advocated by Samuel Gompers.
In several major unions which were indispensable to military
production-the coal miners, the machinists, the needle-trades,
some building-trades-the Socialists had formed an important
part of the leadership. Almost without exception these men now
left the Party. They attacked every strike during the war, no
matter what the cause, and they failed to launch organizing
drives in the mass-production industries.
Finally, it became apparent that the radical newspapers ex-
isted only on sufferance from the Federal authorities. One jour-
nal after another was suppressed or deprived of its second-class
mailing permit. The New York Farward began to give qualified
support to the war. The Masses, after a brief suppression, re-
appeared as The Liberator and carefully stayed within the law.
Even the Appeal to Reason, which had once thundered at Roose-
velt and scoffed at Taft, changed its name and endorsed the
policies of President Wilson.
In view of these important defections the protest movement
showed a surprising strength. Huge demonstrations were staged
in New York, Chicago, San Francisco. Even in small cities like
Moline and Rock Island, TIlinois, anticonscription meetings
overflowed from the hall into the street. The International So-
cialiat Review reported that eighteen thousand men had failed to
register for the draft in the 'l\vin Cities. The largest May Day
parade in the history of Cleveland marched through the central
area in 1917, with the marchers bearing banners that denounced
THE BENDING' CROSS
the war and the capitalist class. After three years of prepared-
ness agitation, a sizeable segment of the population still did not
believe in the war.
No government can afford to tolerate open dissent in wartime.
Woodrow Wilson had sadly recognized this truth just before he
asked for the declaration of hostilities. According to Frank I.
Cobb, editor of the Democratic New York World, the
had said to him on the early morning of April !!: "Once lead
this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a
thing as tolerance. To fight you must be ruthless and brutal. and
the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of
our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman
on the beat, the man in the street." The same note had been
sounded by the Socialist convention in St. Louis: "Our entrance
into the European conflict at this time . will give the powers
of reaction in this country the pretext for an attempt to throttle
our rights and to crush our democratic institutions . . ."
These predictions proved only too true. The Espionage Law,
passed by Congress to guard the country against sedition, served
as a potent weapon against the nonconformists. The act was
construed loosely and applied without remorse. In Grand
Rapids, Detroit, Kansas City, Minneapolis, St. Paul. Boston,
Seattle, all over the Unit.ed States, those who opposed the war
were imprisoned. The three leaders of the Socialist Party in
Ohio-Alfred Wagenknecht, Charles E. Ruthenberg, and
Charles Baker-were charged with advocatii:tg resistance to the
conscription law. Debs' close friend and colleague, Kate Rich-
ards O'Hare. was indicted because of an antiwar speech she
gave in July, 1917. Twelve radical publications were banned
from the mails in August. On September 7, 1917, Federal
agents made simultaneous raids on IWW and Socialist head-.
quarters across the country. And the Terre Haute Tribune,
which had always been friendly to Eugene Debs, counselled
much harsher treatment, "the firing squad."
These developments were clothed with the formalities of the
law. Far more frightening was the extralegal campaign against
the peace movement. A wave of insane hysteria swept through
the "man in the street," even as the President had predicted.'
WORLD SOCIALISM
845
Police officials turned their backs while mobs of servicemen and
civilians terrorized Socialists and pacifists, wrecking t.heir halls
and stoning their homes. A typical incident occurred in Tulsa,
Oklahoma. where a crowd of hooded men took seventeen
Wobblies away from the local police, slashed them with whips,
then covered them with tar and feathers. A United Press dis-
patch from Tulsa stated that similar treatment was contem-
plated for every IWW in the oil fields. The real c ~ s e of action
in many cases lay, not in the antiwar activities of the radicals,
but in their efforts to organize trade unions in open-shop areas.
During a mine strike at Bisbee, Arizona, more than eleven hun-
dred men were forced into cattle cars and carried far into the
desert, where they were dropped off without food or water.
They were told never to return to the town where they lived and
worked.
Month after month in the Social Revolution, as the Rip-Saw
had been renamed, Eugene Debs wrote outraged protests
against these atrocities. Late in October one of his acquaint-
ances, a pacifist clergyman in Ohio, was seized by a mob as he
was about to enter a hall iriNewport, Kentucky. The clergyman
was thrown into an automoblIe and driven miles away to a
forest where he was stripped and lashed with a blacksnake whip.
His attackers even soaked his hair with gasoline, as if in prep-
aration to set him afire, but they were frightened away before
the plan was carried out. As these incidents multiplied, Debs
became ever more caustic. more accusing, more rebellious. Not
even the Germans had ever been charged with worse cruelty
than this. Then thirty Negroes were killed in a race riot at East
St. Louis, only a few hours drive from Terre Haute. In bitter
anguish Debs called the murdersi"a foul blot upon the American
labor movement." ''Had the labor unions ever opened the door
to the Negro," Debs continued, "instead of barring him. ..
and forcing him in spite of himself to be a scab, the atrocious
crime at East St. Louis would never have blackened the pages of
American history."
Yet, in spite of his anger about the destruction of civil lib-
erties, Eugene Debs was following an equivocal policy. His lec-
ture tours had been largely discontinued with the declaration of
war, and the few surviving Socialist periodicals furnished the
sole outlet for his opinions. He had continued to excoriate the
capitalist class; he had furiously denounced the vigilantes; but
there he had stopped. The conscription act, the Liberty Loan
drives, the mounting subsidies to England and France had all
been inaugurated without opposition from Eugene Debs. He
was trying to escape the results of war without attacking the
measures that made possible the continuation of the wax itself.
Nor had he ever denounced those Socialists who had left the
Party. Some of'these persons, like Rose Pastor Stokes, had been
both respected colleagues and cherished friends. As recently as
July, 1916, Debs had written a warmhearted birthday note to
Rose Stokes. "Dear, dear Comrade Gene!" had been the reply,
'One forgets birthdays these terrible times-remembering days
of world-wide death and the moaning of the women, who have
lost. But sometimes, perhaps, it is well to remember-and re-
membering the struggle to which we were bom-and dedicate,
vow anew our allegiance to the cause of the People. Great leader
of that cause, loving greetings to you." Eugene Debs' whole
spirit prevented him from turning against these men and women
who had been his comrades. Knowing Rose Stokes' sincerity and
her unHagging devotion to the workers' welfare, he realized that
her support of the war sprang from her belief that it was, in all
truth, a war for democracy. While vigorously dissenting from
this view, he was unable to denounce those friends who held it.
Even when Charles Edward Russell publicly referred to his
former associates as "dirty traitors" who should-"be.driven out
of the country," Debs was not moved to vehemence. He replied
in compassionate and mournful tenns: "No one attacked Elihu
Root more fiercely as a Wall Street tool and a public enemy than
Charles Edward Russell, but now Mr. Russell receives him with
open arms, and jointly and severally these twin darlings de-
nounce those who are for peace, and want them driven out of
the country. . Poor Russell! He will pay dearly enough be-
fore he gets through." This note of detachment, of passiveness,
was struck repeatedly during the :final months of 1917. "It is
good indeed," he wrote to a friend, "to feel now and then the
heartening comrade-touch across the spaces. If only the world,
WORLD SOCIALISM
947
the whole of it, had your fuie spirit and your tender regard for
all that is flesh."
Debs was indeed hesitant and floundering, for reasons that
now can only be guessed. He was in ill-health; he was old; prolr
ably Kate tried to deter him; he may have thought that protest
against the war was hopeless. Some Socialists in Terre Haute
even believed that his brother Theodore was urging him to re-
frain from any statement that might be termed criminal. What-
ever the cause, Debs was certainly groping in the dark He still
believed in friendship among the workers of the world; he still
believed that the war had been inspired by the capitalist pirates;
he still longed for peace; but he had no program. He was lost.
Month after month he shouted his mighty protests, and they
turned out to be frail bleats in an indifferent country. He was
not of this world at all. America had become a strange land, in
which Eugene Debs was a bewildered and unnoticed vagabond.
The newspapers paid almost no heed to his tour of Ohio in
the autumn of 1917. For several weeks he traveled around the
state, holding small and ineffectual meetings in the homes of
Socialist friends. His headquarters were established at the home
of Mrs. Marguerite Prevey in Akron, as was his custom when-
ever he visited Ohio. Mrs. Prevey, vivacious, matronly, a pio-
neer Socialist, had clung to her radical convictions in spite of a
modest fortune made from local real estate. Her own example
had persuaded her that the wage earners had no monopoly on
radicalism, and she brought into the Party dozens of prominent
and wealthy citizens. Her latest recruits were Mr. and Mrs. Wil-
liam M. Brown of Galion, Ohio. Brown had been a bishop in an
organized church. Mrs. Prevey was determined that they should
be welcomed into the fold by the high priest of American S0-
cialism. Eugene Debs. Every time Debs' travels carried him near
Galion. Mrs. Prevey asked him to visit the Browns. Something
always seemed to interfere. Finally Mrs. Prevey insisted that
he comply with her request. In justification of his negligence,
Debs protested that ministers never amounted to anything in
the Socialist movement. But at length he yielded, and he was
completely charmed by the bishop, and his wife. His general
opinion of ministers, however, remained unchanged.
THE BENDING CROSS
The one }:nemorableincident 0 f Debs' tour in Ohio, his meet-
ing with Bishop Brown, was completely unrelated to the war.
Then, beginning late in 1917, the daily happenings beat upon his
mind with the fury of a clenched fist. Increasing numbers of
American troops moved into the European conflict, to mingle
their blood and bodies impartially with the others. The vision
of violent death, of the unseen hand of war cruelly striking
acroSs gutted fields, moved with maddening effect before the
eyes of Eugene Debs. The news from Europe further inflamed
the festering nakedness of his anguish. He carried within him-
self the inchoate strains of primitive religion, the deep yearnings
toward brotherhood, the tender suffering from universal pain.
As he visualized the agonies of Europe he fell victim to a wistful
and haunting melancholy which moaned for an end to the in-
ternational crime. "I abhor war," said Debs in 1918. "I would
oppose the war if I stood alone. WheQ, I thinkof a cold, glitter-
ing steel bayonet being plunged into the white, quivering flesh
of a human being, I recoil with horror. I have often wondered if
I could take the life of my fellow man, even to save my own."
This was the reality of 1917, a reality from which Debs was
desperate to escape.
In November the Bolsheviks of Russia seemed to point the
road to peace. News of the Russian Revolution sent a tremor of
hope through the American radical movement. Mter long years
of struggle without reward, at the very moment when the entire
world seemed insane, the Marxian theory had demonstrated its
strength. Foundation of the first socialist government thrilled
and inspired the socialists of every country; the peasants and
workers of Russia had proved that they had both the will and
the strength to take power. They soon proved that they knew
how to use it by signing a peace treaty with Germany and taking
their country out of the war. But before the treaty, came an-
other German invasion of Russia. The Terre Haute Tribune,
which had so recently hinted at "the firing squad" for dissenters,
asked Debs to comment on the invasion. He pointed a stem
finger at the war socialists of Germany: "In standing for this
crime, they cap the climax of their betrayal and disgrace of the
Socialist movement. In standing for this, the majority Socialists
WORLD SOCIALISM
of .Germany prove finally that they will stand for anything ex-
cept Socialism and democracy."
Rumors promptly began to the effect that Debs was ready to
announce his support of the Allied cause, and these rumors were
accelerated by the opening paragraphs of his article in the Social
Revolution for January, 1918. The quickest way to end the war,
Debs declared, was to encourage the workers of Germany and
Austria to overthrow their emperors. The end of this same
article, however, proved that his views had not changed: "The
ruling classes of all nations engaged in the conflict, including our
own profiteering plutocracy, must also be overthrown and this
is the great work that confronts us on the threshold of the new
year."
The November Revolution and Russia's retirement from the
war, while inspiring the American socialists, alarmed the pro-
war forces in the United States. Inevitably there came another
wave of arrests, raids, indictments. The editors of The M(l$ses
were summoned into court. Victor Berger and four other Party
leaders were charged with violation of the Espionage Act. Dur-
ing the opening months of 1918, more than two thousand Wob-
blies were arrested. It was reported that a thousand indictments
and two hundred convictions had already been secured under
the Espionage Law. The hysteria and fear ruling the country
were clearly illustrated by the experience of John Reed, one of
the best and most popular war In April, Reed
returned from Russia with the biggest story on earth. He had
been in St. Petersburg in November; he had seen the revolution.
But none of the magazines would print his account because they
knew he favored the Bolsheviks. CoUier'a accepted one article,
had it set in type, then it to the author. Oswald Gar-
rison Villard was warned by the Federal authorities that the
Nation would be suppressed if it printed any of Reed's stories.
This vigorous censorship, coupled with the President's decla-
ration of war aims, wrought considerable change in the views
of many prominent Socialists. Morris HiIlquit, in the autumn
of 1917, had made a gallant race for mayor of New York on a
qualified antiwar platform. But the seven Socialist aldermen
who had been elected in that campaign now declared themselves
550
THE BENDING CROSS
in favor of a Liberty Loan drive. Meyer London. the only So-
cialist Congressman, announced that the President's declared
objectives coincided wi th the Party's views. Victor Berger said
that he wanted to win the war "for democracy." These $te-
ments were a sharp reversal of the majority report adopted at
St. Louis the previous year. At that time the Party had termed
the war "the logical outcome of the competitive capitalist sys-
tem"; many Socialists now hoped to halt the war without dis-
turbing the capitalist system. Woodrow Wilson, who had been
a "tool of Wall Street," was hailed as the "champion of de-
mocracy."
Eugene Debs found himself in violent disagreement with this
trend in the Party, which amounted to following the war-social-
ists of Europe in their nationalistic program. He was also
shocked and repelled by the swollen casualty lists, by the bes-
tiality of "a cold, glittering steel bayonet beiug plunged into the
white, quivering flesh of a human being." Daily his mind be-
came more tortured, more tormented, as he realized that the
labyrinth of cruelty and pain retraced itself to end at the be-
ginning. Ferocious drums of suffering began to throb within
him. His anguish became a spasm, but the spasm did not move
his legs or his lips. He had been a changed man since the war
began, more restrained, seemingly older, unhappier. No longer
was Eugene Debs the rollicking radical who had coined witti-
cisms and used them freely. His articles had no incisiveness and
no irony; they were mere protests, shrilly uttered but dying
into a whisper.
And then, with the rapid swish of destiny, he was thrown back
into the battle. Eugene Debs had not gone in search of the r ~
core of national life; it came to him as man after man was
sucked into the whirling torrent. Day by day, incident by inci-
dent, the pressure rose and his personal explosion grew more
imminent. The previous December, when Kate O'Hare was con-
victed of violating the Espionage Act, Debs had been incredu-
lous. "I cannot yet believe," he had written to Kate O'Hare,
"that they will ever dare to send you to prison for exercising
your constitutional rights of free speech, but if they do . . . I
shall feel guilty to be at large." Two months later Frank P.
WORLD SOCIALISM
S51
O'Hare began the organization of a defense campaign for his
wife and the other political prisoners, and Debs' program began
to take shape. A new spirit of determination appeared in Debs'
letter to Frank O'Hare on March 2: "You can be no more
anxious, even as the husband of your beloved Kate, than I am
as her comrade, to see her defense made. complete in every
particular, as well as the defense of all other persecuted com-
rades who have been arrested and made to suffer for our sake.
It is our fight, and we have got to put our hearts into it if we
are worthy of the sacrifices these splendid comrades have made
in our behalf."
This trenchant tone had already reappeared in Debs' defense
of the 105 Wobblies who were on trial in Chicago. Wall Street
interests, said his article in the Internatiar!.al Socialist Review,
were directly responsible for the propaganda attacks on the
IWW, which was being blamed for every grass fire, shortage of
rain, and crop failure in' the United States. These attacks oc-
curred, not because the W obblies were unpatriotic, but because
they were a "growing menace to capitalist autocracy and mis-
rule." And, most significant of all, Debs called for a national
campaign to insure the civil rights of all men charged with
political crimes.
The mob lawlessness which had appeared at Bisbee, at East
St. Louis, at Tulsa, relentlessly swept into Debs' home town of
Terre Haute. A schoolteacher of German parentage was sum-
moned before the Vigo County Council for Defense, then was
summarily discharged for disloyalty. Her crime: she belonged to
the Socialist Party and had told" her pupils to remain seated
while singing The Star-Spangled Banner. Two brothers who
owned a small store were invaded by a mob of vigilantes,
roughed up, their stock despoiled, their store boycotted. For the
next several months they received frequent orders from Kate
Debs, who previously had traded elsewhere.
The self-appointed loyalty agents never molested 451 North
Eighth Street, but they struck on every side of Eugene Debs. A
capable professor at Indiana State College was forced to resign
because of alleged pro-German views. Books in the German
language were publicly burned in the streets; the vigilantes
THE BENDING CROSS
gathered this kindling by checking the libraries of private citi-
zens. One of Theodore Debs' neighbors, a German grOcer, was
beaten up by a banker while a policeman held the grocer's arms.
A Socialist coal miner in a near-by town was nearly lynched be-
cause he refused to buy a Liberty Bond. Cruelty, deceit, ar-
rogance, fear spread their parl;llyzing tentacles over the whole of
local life. The accusing finger and the strident voice became the
true marks of the patriot. And Eugene Debs became ever more
angry, more "resentful, more determined. Feeling confined by
the prejudices of his countrymen, he resolved to break out of
this prison created by popular hysteria.
For the first time in thirteen months Eugene Debs had his say
about Socialist policy in May, 1918. In a personal statement
issued through the national office of the" Party, he proposed
another convention because the St. Louis Manifesto contained
"certain propositions ... which are now impossible." Many
leaders claimed that a new national convention might split the
organization, but Debs declared that a split was preferable to
"confusion and chaos within the Party." He also repeated his
unqualified opposition to the entire war: "I have condemned
the German majority socialists, and I am not now going to
imitate their perfidy, much as -the capitalist press may abuse
me for not doing so." The statement closed with animpassioned
defense of the men and women who had violated the Espionage
Act: -"The party leaders and many other comrades have been
indicted and are now in prison or out on bail pending trial for
being true to our cause. They are charged with being pro-Ger-
mans, disloyalists and traitors, and if they are guilty so am I.
But they are not guilty and their alleged disloyalty is to the real
traitors of this nation and will be written to their everlasting
honor." "
Several newspapers immediately seized "upon Debs' conven-
tion proposal as proof that he intended to repudiate his antiwar
views. Actually he wanted to work out a program to make these
views effective, and he thought that elected delegates were the
proper persons to take such a step: "Let the rank and file be
heard and we shall make no mistake." The gossip about his
WORLD SOCIALISM
pending renegacy so infuriated Debs that he issued another
curt, conclusive statement:
Years ~ o I declared that there was only one war in which I
would enhst and that was the war of the workers of the world
against the exploiters of the world I declared moreover that the
working class had no interest in the wars declared and waged
by the ruling classes of the various countries upon one another
for conquest and spoils. That is my position today:
When a member of the Party's National Committee visited
Terre Haute early in June, he found Debs seething with resent-
ment against the President's pretensions of democracy, while
Kate O'Hare and all the others were being sent to prison. Noble
C. Wilson, Debs' campaign manager in 1916, dropped into Debs'
office a few days later. The Socialist leader, sprawling idly in a
chair behind his desk, seemed more animated than he had been
for months. He laughed and joked as he told Wilson his plans.
The hour had finally come, said Debs, for him to speak out
against the war and accept the consequences. He had no doubt
what the result would be. With the words bubbling through his
clear, vigorous chuckle, he concluded, "Of course, I'll take about
two jumps and they'll nail me, but that's all right." The next
day, Eugene Debs caught the train going east from. Terre
Haute.
[ fJ J
THE ONLY AVENUE of expression still open to Debs was the
public platform. The Socialist press had been practically wiped
out. Paper after paper had been suppressed or stripped of its
second-class mailing permit-the American Socialist, the New
Y or k Call, The M aBses, finally the I nterna:tional Socialist Review
and Frank O'Hare's Social Revolution. But Debs knew that he
would have no trouble securing lecture engagements. He de-
liberately framed his indictment of the war in extreme terms;
such an approach jibed with both of his objectives. He wanted
to arouse resentment and opposition to the war; he also wanted
to taunt the Federal authorities into placing him on trial Debs
THE BENDING CROSS
had been completely serious in his statement to Kate O'Hare
that, if she went to prison, he would "feel guilty to be at large."
Well, she was about to go to prison. So were hundreds of others.
Rose Pltstor Stokes had re-entered the Party and publiclyex-
pressed antiwar views, for which she had already received a
ten-year sentence. Debs was determined either to open the
prison gates or to swing them shut behind himself.
But his hope was frustrated. During the first two weeks of
June, he gave. his antiwar speech a dozen times in Indiana and
Illinois. It was greeted with enthusiastic approval---and the
Federal government took no steps against him.. Debs became
increasingly angry. After fifteen months of inactivity he was
finally free. Although he persistently baited the district at-
torneys and vehemently denounced the President, nothing
happened. Half of his beautiful plan was being spoiled by the
callous indifference of the law-enforcement officials. This was
the final insult.
As he took the train eastward into Ohio, Debs was happier
than he had been for what seemed eternity. His own move would
encourage similar action by other Socialists. At last he had re-
sumed his customary post, at the head of the radical offensive.
His love of It hard fight in a good cause was being satisfied to the
utmost. If only the Federal government would take some notice
of him, everything would be perfect, just perfect. And in Ohio
the fight would be even more exultant. For a decade Ohio had
been the center of the Party's left wing. It had been the only
state to vote against the "sabotage" amendment in 191!l. The
Socialists there had waged a forthright struggle against every
measure for the prosecution of the war. The leading Socialists of
Ohio-Alfred Wagenknecht, Charles E. Ruthenberg, and
Charles Baker-were all serving terms at the Stark County
Workhouse i.i:J. Canton for their opposition to the draft act. And
Eugene Debs was in Canton on June 16, 1918, to speak at the
Ohio convention of the Socialist Party.
Early in the afternoon, the local reception committee picked
Debs up at the Courtland Hotel to drive him to Nimisilla Park,
where he was to give his speech. As the small group of Socialists
passed through the hotel lobby, Debs was intercepted by Clyde
WORLD SOCIALISM 856
R. Miller, a reporter for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer. Debs
agreed to answer a few questions, so Miller asked if he still sup-
ported the St. Louis Manifesto. "I approved of the adoption of
the platform in form and substance at the time it was created,"
said Debs, "but in the light of the Russian situation I think we
should put forth a restatement of the aims of the Socialist
Party." When asked to amplify this statement, Debs continued
"that the Boisheviki of Russia were the inspiration of the world
and that he hoped their ideas would come to prevail in Amer-
ica:' Miller also recalled that Debs "pointed out that the suc-
cess of the Bolshevik movement in Russia was something on
which to model and base the ideals for this country-the ideals
espoused by the Socialists."
Eugene Debs did not go directly to the meeting at Nimisilla
Park. He insisted that he must first stop at the Stark County
Workhouse, which was almost across the street from the park.
From his brief interview with the three Socialist prisoners,
Debs acquired a new fury, a new determination. When the
three men first were imprisoned, Wagenknecht and Ruthenberg
Were assigned to work in the laundry. This, they thought, was
clearly discrimination. against their political views, so they
thanked the warden but felt compelled to refuse. For the next
two days they hung by their wrists from a rafter. Charles Baker
managed to smuggle this news out of the jail, and a fierce pub-
lic uproar resulted in a compromise between the inmates and
the warden. In spite of this experience the three men made no
complaints to Debs. They felt confident that they were stand-
ing on the proper side of the battle.
A few minutes after Debs left the jail Alfred Wagenknecht,
crowding up to the bars of his cell, saw him walking through the
crow<:l in the Park. Not even the scorching heat had forced the
Socialist leader to discard his tweed jacket or to unbutton his
vest. As he made his way through the crowd, a Socialist on the
platform opened the meeting by reading the Declaration of In-
dependence. Then Mrs. Marguerite Prevey, Debs' hostess of
preceding years, began to introduce the main speaker. Her re-
marks were brief, and they centered upon the widespread news-
paper reports that Debs had "repudiated his antiwar statements.
Mrs. Prevey thought this was quite amusing, and the gales of
laughter seemed to prove that the audience agreed.
Finally Eugene Debs, calm, smiling, moved to the front of the
platform, a plain wooden bandstand undecorated by the Amer-
ican flag. That seemed strange at a public meeting on June 16,
1918. But even more strange was Debs' speech. There was not
much in it that he had not said many times in the past. But that
speech became a byword, a flaming document in the Socialist
movement, because this was war, and men did not say the things
they might say in time of peace. Thousands of Socialists warmed
themselves on bleak, cold days with the memory of Eugene Debs
standing on the platform at Canton, speaking his mind.
Alfred Wagenknecht, although he pressed hard against the
bars of his cell, could not hear the speaker in Nimisilla Park. It
was too bad, because Debs was talking about Wagenknecht and
the others: "I have just returned," said Debs, "from a visit
over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying
the penalty for their devotion to the cause of the working class.
They have come to realize, as many of us have, that it is ex
tremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free
speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the
world. I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are
certain limitations placed on the right of free speech. I must be
exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more
careful and prudent as to how I say it. (Laughter) I may not be
able to say all I think; (Laughter and Applause) but I am not
going to say anything that I do not think. I would a thousand
times rather be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and
coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail-and
some of the rest of us in jail-but they can not put the Socialist
movement in jail."
And Debs swept irresistibly onward, defying the very in-
junction that he had laid down in his opening words. "There is
but one thing you have to be concerned about, and that is that
you keep four-square with the principles of the international
Socialist movement. It is only when you begin to compromise
that trouble begins. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter
what others may say, or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I
WORLD SOCIALISM
am right with myself and the cause." Now for the first time
Debs struck out at thoSe Socialists who had deserted the Party:
"They lack the fiber for the revolutionary test; they fall away;
they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand,
they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social
revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect
and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to
jail or to hell for them, if need be-they are writing their names,
in this crucial hour-they are writing their names in fadeless
letters in the history of mankind."
The crowd of twelve hundred persons was pressing forward
excitedly toward the platform. They laughed, shouted, ap-
plauded, clapped their hands, and waved their hats. And all
the while the Department of Justice agents and American Pro-
tective League volunteers moved through the audience, check-
ing draft cards. Sweat ran down Debs' face as he moved back
and forth across the stage, then turned to lean far over the rail
and stretch his lean hands toward the men before him. "It
felt," said one man, "exactly as if that forefinger was hitting you
on the nose." The words, however, struck elsewhere: "They tell
us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are
democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people.
(Laughter) This is too much; even for a joke. (Laughter) But
it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter."
The levity failed to disappear. As Debs continued his detailed
indictment of American society, he often remembered that
laughter is a pbtent weapon. The Supreme Court came in for
special treatment: "Why, the other day, by a vote of five to
four-a kind of craps game-come seven, come 'leven-they
declared the child labor law unconstitutional. .. and this in
our so-called Democracy, so that we may continue to grind the
flesh and blood and bones of puny litle children into profits for
the junkers of Wall Street . . . The history of this country is
being written in the blood of the cluldhood the industrial lords
have murdered."
During the next two hours, Debs passionately defended the
men who were being called murderers, and German agents, and
hoodlums. He spoke for Tom Mooney, who had been convicted
858
THE BENDING CROSS
of throwing a bomb at a San Francisco preparedness parade in
1916. He spoke for Bill Haywood and the other Wobblies, who
were even then on trial in a Chicago courtroom. He spoke for
the Bolsheviks of Russia, who were being reviled and denounced
in Congress, in the headlines, in the pulpits. What right had the
profiteers, shouted Debs, to parade as superpatriots? The rulers
of Wall Street, now vehemently denouncing the German jun-
kers. had consorted with the junkers for years, traded with them,
played golf with them, married their daughters to them. What
right had Theodore Roosevelt, who had been so fond of Kaiser
Wilhelm, to appear on the stage as the great enemy of German
autocracy? While Theodore Roosevelt and the Kaiser were
vacationing together at Potsdam in 1907, there were German
socialists rotting in German prisons for their opposition to that
same Kaiser. Who, in the name of truth, who was the real foe
of German autocracy?
Only once in the entire speech did Debs speak about war, and
even then he did not speak specifically about the World War.
But his statement clearly was meant to cover the World War:
"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject
class has always fought the battles. The master class has had
all to gain and nothing to lose, while t ~ subject class has had
nothing to gain and all to lose--especially their lives."
A government stenographer was frantically writing each word
as Debs went into his stirring climax: "Yes, in good time we are
going to sweep into power in this nation and throughout the
world. . The world is changing daily before our eyes. The
sun of capitalism is setting; the sun of Socialism is rising. .
In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant
-the greatest in history-will proclaim the emancipation of the
working class and the brotherhood of all mankind." As he
walked down from the platform, roar after roar of applause and
cheers broke from the audience. Each man felt surging within
him- a new devotion, a new strength, a strength that he had
never realized in the past. Throughout the entire world socialists
looked toward Eugene Debs and smiled.
But there were also frowns, and .hostility, and anger. The gov-
ernment stenographer turned in his report of the speech, and
WORLD SOCIALISM
859
the Federal Attorney's office in Cleveland read it carefully. The
Espionage Act had just been amended to include several non-
military offenses, such as uttering "profane, scurrilous and abu-
sive language" about the government. Just thirteen days after
the Canton speech, a Federal grand jury in Cleveland indicted
Eugene Debs. Perhaps they thought it 'Was "abusive" to call
the Supreme Court "a kind of craps game," as he had done.
They decided, at any rate, that Debs' speech at Canton had
violated the new Sedition Act on ten different counts.
Debs was arrested on June 80,1918, as he was about to enter
the Bohemian Gardens in Cleveland to address a Socialist
picnic. Taken to the Federal Building in Cleveland, he rode up
in the elevator with Clyde R. Miller, the Plain-Dealer reporter
who had interviewed him two weeks earlier in Canton. Miller
again asked if Debs wanted to repudiate the St. Louis Mani-
festo. "I do not," replied Debs, "and, if necessary, I shall die
for those principles." A few minutes later in the marshal's office,
Debs told the reporters about his rale in the formation of the
American Railway Union and his indictment during the Pull-
man boycott.
Since it was Sunday, most of the offices were closed, and the
authorities refused to make arrangements for Debs to post bail.
So Eugene Debs, for the first time in twenty-three years, was
compelled to sleep in a cell. A jailer awakened him the next
morning with the news that he had been nominated for Con-
gress by the Socialists of Terre Haute. Mrs. Marguerite Prevey
and a Cleveland comrade, A. W. Moskowitz, soon provided
the ten-thousand-dollar bond, and Debs was released.
When the Socialist leader returned to Terre Haute he spoke
at a large meeting at the baseball park on Wabash Avenue.
Although the audience was honeycombed with members of the
local Defense League, Debs gave a two-hour presentation of his
reason for opposing the war. Many of his fellow townsmen had
become proficient at book burning, the detection of subversive
schoolteachers, the destruction of German-owned grocery
stores, threats to lynch Socialist miners, and other types of
secret-service work. But when Debs finished his speech the
audience rose to applaud.
CHAPTER XVIII
[ 1 J
E
UGENE DEBS was neither surprised nor alarmed by
ar:est. In ,?iscussing the indictment with friends, he
saId SImply: I had a hunch that speech was likely to
settle the matter."
But the rest of the country did not exhibit this same equanim-
ity. Nothing during the entire war had shocked the American
people in quite the same way as Debs' arrest. Most citizens had
shown little concern about the suppression of the Socialist
press, the maSs arrests, the Bisbee atrocity. the long
and harsh treatment meted out to dissenters. But it was par-
ticularly revealing to hear Eugene Debs called a traitor and a
Gennan agent. Thousands of men who felt no sympathy for
the Socialist cause were acquainted with Debs. Letters of sup-
port and applause arrived from every part of the land, and Debs
replied by advising firm devotion to the principles of socialism.
Just a few days after he returned to Terre Haute from Can-
ton. Debs was stricken by a: severe attack of lumbago . .AJt
Young and John Reed. covering the trial of the 105 Wobblies
in Chicago for The Liberator, took advantage of the July Fourth
recess to visit Debs. The door to 451 North Eighth Street was
opened by Kate Debs, who explained that her husband had
"not been well-not for a whole year." But she invited them to
come in, and Debs, hearing about his visitors, insisted that he
should dress and come downstairs. His descent reminded Art
Young of "a human motor with wings." Debs shook hands with
both of his guests at once, and Young noticed that "the old
me" was back in his eyes.
As the three men sat talking in the parlor, the sounds of the
July Fourth parade came Boating through the windows. In his
report of the interview. John Reed mentioned the men who
passed the house and looked at it "with expressions compounded
360
WORLD SOCIALISM 861
half of eager malice, and half of a sort of fear. 'That's where
Gene Debs lives,' you could 'see them saying, as one would say,
'The House of the Traitor.' "
Finally Debs got up and said suddenly, "Come on, let's go
ou t and sit on the front porch and give' em a good show, if they
want to see me." So they all moved out to the porch and sat
there in their shirt sleeves, laughing among themselves at the
passers-by. Whenever Debs was able to catch the eye of a man
going down the sidewalk, the,man "howed over-cordiaUy," ac-
cording to Reed. The others "only looked furtively our way,
and whispered." Reed asked Debs if he wasn't afraid of being
lynched, and the Socialist leader confessed that the notion
hadn't even entered his mind. "I guess I'm physically protected,
anyway," he said. "1 know that so long as 1 keep my eye on
them, they won't dare to do anything. AP. a rule they're cow-
ardly curs anyway."
Debs was inspired by the continuation of the antiwar move-
ment in spite of the efforts of the government and the news-
papers to destroy and silence the opposition. Speaking of his
comrades, he said, "If this can't break them, why then 1 know
nothing can. Socialism's on the way. They can't stop it, no
matter what they do." Art Young drew a sketch of Debs' "lean,
expressive hands" and another of his profile as he leaned against
a porch box full of petunias. Finally the two men got up to
leave, the youthful, sparkling John Reed who left the world one
immortal piece of reportage, and the brilliant cartoonist, whose
bald head and paunch gave him the appearance of a genial
small-town politician. As they walked down the steps, Debs
clasped their hands and slapped their shoulders, and told them
not to break faith with the cause. "Now you teU all the boys
everywhere who are making the fight, Gene Debs says he's with
you, all the way, straight through, without a flicker."
But Debs had a premonition that he would not be a free
.agent very long; he refused to run for Congress in his home dis-
trict. There was nominated in his stead Shubert Sebree, a
young glassworker who had learned his Marxism under the
tutelage of Stephen Reynolds. Here, thought Debs, was a liv-
ing example of that heroism that gave him so much confidence
862 THE BENDING CROSS'
in the final triumph of Socialism. "Please accept hearty eon-
gratulations from Theodore and myself upon your nomination
for congress," Eugene Debs wrote to Sebree. "A better selec-
tion could not have been made. I need not say to you 'that you
will have all the support we can possibly give you. You are a
true representative of the class and the cause which the So-
cialist party represents and your nomination is alike creditable
to yourself and the party."
Although Debs' lumbago lingered throughout the summer,
he found the strength to make several speeches for Sebree's
campaign. In August he attended a meeting in Chicago of all
state secretaries of the Party, where he helped to defeat a move
to repudiate the St. Louis Manifesto. On Labor Day he gave an
antiwar speech in Akron. He was in Rochester on September 5,
urging continued opposition to the war and a strong campaign
to free the political prisoners. Kate O'Hare was now ill a Mis-
souri prison. Rose Pastor Stokes had just been convicted of
violating the Sedition Act, but she was free on bail pending her
appeal. And for Eugene Debs the doors of prison seemed a short
step ahead.
In the last few days before his trial, which was scheduled for
September 9 in the Federal District Court in Cleveland, Debs
had several conferences with his attorneys. He had ignored
Clarence Darrow's offer of help because of Darrow's prowar
views, and Morris Hillquit was confined to a sanitarium with
but he was represented by a full battery of S0-
cialist attorneys-Seymour Stedman and William A. Cunnea of
Chicago, Joseph W. Sharts of Dayton, Morris H. Wolf of Cleve-
land. This array of legal talent found itself with almost noth-
ing to do. Both Debs and his lawyers were agreed that they
would not take advantage of any technicalities to secure an
acquittal. They were prepared to admit that Debs had given
the Canton speech, but they denied that his speech was crim-
inaL They had filed a demurrer to the indictment, but it was
overruled. Their sole argument was that the Sedition Act vio-
lated the First Amendment, and that question could scarcely
be decided by a trial court. At a conference the night before the
trial the four lawyers and Debs all felt that he was certain to be
WORLD SOCIALISM ..
S6S
convicted. But the defendant had no regrets. "I have nothing
to take back," he contended "All I said I believe to be true."
The attorneys realized that the best weapons available were
the personality and philosophy of Eugene Debs. Morris Wolf
suggested several times that Kate Debs should be present in the
courtroom, so that the jurors would regard Debs as a normal
citizen rather than as a monster. The other attorneys tended to
agree with Wolf. But each time this was mentioned to Debs he
gave an evasive reply, saying that it might not be good for
Kate's health .. At no time, according to Wolf, did he say that
he did not want Kate in the courtroom. Later, however, Debs
told the reporters that Kate had remained in Terre Haute at
his request.
For several hours before court convened on September 9
Debs was holding open house for his friends at the Hollenden
Hotel and the Gillsy House. He was in perfect spirits and seemed
quite unaware that there was anything unusual about that par"'
ticular morning. To one comrade who was concerned about the
outcome he said, This is but another milepost along the path-
way of progress. We shall not tarry here very long." When at
length he went to the Federal Building he found the corridors
of that huge and forbidding stone edifice packed with friends
and sympathizers, all hoping for a seat to witness the trial Most
of them had removed their Party buttons from their coat lapels,
but one man was wearing a bright red necktie. As the spectators
passed into the courtroom they ran a gauntlet of FBI men and
members of the American Protective League, who searched all
pockets and purses for revolvers or bombs.
The courtroom itself was oak and marble, with a ceiling of
gilt and tall windows. The judge's bench was long and imposing.
On the wall above it hung an enormous painting of angels with
swords of fire, guarding stone tablets on which were engraved
the Ten Commandments. The judge seemed one with the
bench, as immovable as the oak panels or the avenging angels.
Judge D. C. Westenhaver was perhaps a typical judge. He had
once been law partner to Secretary of War Newton D. Bakerin
Martinsburg, West Virginia; to that relation he possibly owed
his appointment to the Federal bench. The Ohio Bar respected
him as a learned and industrious jurist. He was so rigidly honest
that he had resigned from the Union League Club when he be-
came a judge. On the other hand, while a member of the Cleve-
land School Board, he had upheld the discharge of several
teachers who dared to organize a trade union. A man of narrow
sympathies, still he conducted the trial fairly, according to his
lights. Morris Wolf, of Debs' counsel, believed that the judge
was annoyed because the defendant held the center of the stage.
Certainly Judge Westenhaver was determined to uphold the
dignity of the bench. With heavy jowls, his lips drawn tightly
at the corners, he presided sternly over the proceedings.
The jury, equally with the judge, had a predisposition against
the defendant. Jury panels in the Federal District Court of
Cleveland were not chosen at random from the list of property
holders or voters. The method used was far more selective.
County judges in that Federal District recommended to the
Clerk of the District Court those men in their counties whom
they would consider qualified for jury duty. The jury was then
chosen from this panel. Thus the entire venire of one hundred
men, from which Debs' jury was chosen, had an average age of
seventy years, and came from the wealthy and respectable
class of citizens.
Several times during the questioning of the venire the ludi-
crous nature of the proceedings became obvious to the specta-
tors. One talesman testified that he had no occupation. When
Seymour Stedman continued to question him, he finally said:
"Well, I'm I1resident of an insurance company and director of a
bank, if you call that an occupation." He was not dismissed
until he was challenged by Stedman. Although the defense ex-
hausted all of its peremptory challenges, the jury had been sworn
by 2 :25 that afternoon. The twelve jurors were about seventy-
two years old, were worth from fifty to sixty thousand dollars
each. and were "retired from business, from pleasure, and from
responsibility for all troubles arising .outside of their own fam-
ilies," according to Max Eastman who reported the trial for
The Libe1'ator. Seven of them were former merchants or farmers.
All of them said that they believed in the Constitution and had
no prejudice against Socialists.
WORLD SOCIALISM 865
The case for the prosecution was opened by the assistant dis-
trict attorney, F. B. Kavanagh, who pointed toward the de-
fendant and said: "This man is the palpitating pulse of the
sedition crusade." His speech lasted nearly an hour. When he
had finished, Debs cordially leaned across the table and con-
gratulated Kavanagh for his oratory.
In his opening statement for the defense Seymour Stedman
took his cue from a remark by Kavanagh, who had said: ''by
his words shall he be judged, and by his words shall he be con-
demned." Stedman spoke at length about the career of Eugene
Debs, concluding: "We ask you to judge Eugene V. Debs by
his life, his deeds and his works. If you will do that we shall
abide by your verdict." At this statement there was a fl.urry
of clapping iu the courtroom. The judge instantly shouted,
"Arrest that man, and that woman! Arrest everybody you saw
clapping their hands!" One of the offenders was Rose Pastor
Stokes, who was attending Debs' trial while waiting for the
decision on her appeal. It now seemed likely that she would be
sent to jail for contempt of court. But William Cunnea, one of
the defense lawyers, s!l-id quietly to Judge Westenhaver: "I
don't like to see you sit up there and play God to youi' fellow
men." The judge was so startled by this impertinence that he
adjourned court for the day.
The following morning a few of the culprits were fined and
the incident was forgotten; the brash Irishman William Cunnea
had scored his point. Then began the procession of witnesses for
the government. Clyde R. Miller, the reporter for the Plain-
Dealer, testified about his interview with Debs in the Hotel
Courtland before the Canton speech. Miller, regarding his r6le
with obvious distaste, seemed personally friendly to the de-
fendant. As he left the stand Debs walked over to him and said
quietly: "Mr. Miller, all that you said about me is true. You
quoted me straight and accurate. I don't want you to ever feel
that you have done me an injury by testifying against me. You
had to do it, and you did it like a gentleman. We all do what we
cannot possibly help doing, and no blame or stigma attaches
to any of us for doing that."
The second witness was Virgil Steiner, a twenty-year-old
youth who read his version of Debs' speech a t Canton. When he
was hired by the Department of Justice to go to Nimisilla
Park, Steiner was regularly employed by a motor concern in
Canton. His shorthand was hopelessly inadequate and he had
abandoned all effort to follow the speaker, simply writing until
he became tired, pausing to rest, then catching a few more sen-
tences. Another version of the Canton speech was read by Ed-
ward R. Sterling, a Canton attorney who had been hired by the
Socialist Party as a stenographic reporter for the meeting on
June 16. Whenever Sterling read a passage that struck him Q.S
particularly damning, he glanced at the jury to make certain
they understood its true significance. These two reports of Debs'
speech, one of them 25 per cent shorter than the other, were
printed side by side in parallel columns. They formed the main
evidence for the prosecution.
The entire trial had developed a festive atmosphere. Dozens
of Socialists had come to Cleveland for the proceedings and
each noon they held a gay luncheon at the Hotel Hollenden,
where most of them were staying. The bills for the entire party
were being paid by William Bross Lloyd, the millionaire son
of Henry Demarest Lloyd, who had provided bail for Bill Hay-
wood, Kate O'Hare, and other Socialists. But Eugene Debs
graciously denied Lloyd's hospitality. He insisted on staying
at a more modest hotel, the Gillsy House on Ninth Street,
where he had always stopped in Cleveland. He was. even less
concerned about the trial than were the spectators and attor-
neys. In his opinion he was already convicted and the trial was a
mere formality. He had spent an entire day listening to stac-
cato versions of his speech, and his beautiful prose had been
mutilated. This was so upsetting that he began to pass the time
by doing some rather heavy drinking. Each day at noon he tried
to sneak away from his companions at the Hotel Hollenden and
go to 'a small saloon around the corner. Finally Morris Wolf, one
of his attorneys, was detailed by the others to keep Debs sober.
Actually there was not much else for the lawyers to do.
On the morning of September 11, the third day, the court was
so densely packed that the doors could not be closed. The spec-
tators, once inside, found it impossible to leave the room. Be-
WORLD SOCIALISM
867
tween the audience and the participants there stretched a thin
line of secret service agents. The first witness was Charles E.
Ruthenberg, who was called to identify the St. Louis Manifesto.
"His coming there from the prison cell," wrote Max Eastman,
"was designed to impress the jury, I suppose, with an idea that
all Socialists ought to be in jail. His quietness, his gracious de-
meanor, his thin, keen, agile face-he is like a smiling hawk-
seemed to testify to the absurdity of sending any of them to
jail."
Ruthenberg was followed by a few witnesses who had at-
tended the meeting at Nimisilla Park, and whose estimates of
the crowd varied from two hundred to fifteen hundred persons.
But they did establish that Debs had given a speech, and that
the audience had contained several men of draft age. Then Clyde
R. Miller returned to the stand to testify about his conversation
with Debs in the Federal Building after the Socialist leader was
arrested on June 30. Every five or ten minutes Seymour Sted-
man rose to his feet, as he had been doing throughout the trial,
to take exception to a question. Several times Stedman seemed
to be trying to conceal or qualify Debs' views, a tactic that the
defense. had specifically rejected in advance. But his objections
were almost always overruled by Judge Westen haver, so it
made little difference.
The final witness for the prosecution was Joseph Triner, an
officer attached to Naval Intelligence in Chicago. Triner, in the
course of his investigation of a mysterious explosion in the Fed-
eral Building in Chicago, had attended the August 11 meeting
of the state secretaries of the Socialist Party. The witness was
extremely vague as to the facts: he did not know whether there
had been ten men or fifty present in Imperial Hall; he did not
know what had been said either before or after Debs' speech.
But he did know that Eugene Debs, during a ten-minute state-.
ment to the Socialist leaders, had said: "A working man has no
place in a capitalist's war such as this. The only war in which I
have any interest is that of the workers against the capitalists.
They may call me a disloyalist and brand me a traitor, but I
shall stick to my principles. The master class is pretending to
wage this war for democracy, but by persecuting us they have
branded this pretension a lie. I earnestly hope that there may
be no one present here today that will want to change the party's
attitude toward the war."
When the Federal attorney announced tha t there would be no
more government witnesses, there was a pause. Debs glanced at
Stedman. Stedman glanced at the prosecutor. Then Stedman
said, "Let's see, you rest. We rest." Max Eastman thought that
"a kind of numb surprise" went through the courtroom. But
this step was easily predictable. The defense had no witnesses.
They were prepared to admit all the facts which the government,
to the intense disgust of Eugene Debs, had just spent two days
proving. The judge declared a recess of ten minutes, and Morris
Wolf, the only Cleveland attorney on Debs' staff, headed for
His Honor's chambers. Wolf pleaded that Debs should be al-
lowed to speak in his own way. Judge Westenhaver agreed to
accord him that privilege.
When the court reconvened, Seymour Stedman announced
that Debs would make his own plea to the jury. At once the at-
mosphere became concentrated in the courtroom. The badly
diluted drama of the previous two days abruptly changed. A dull
and ponderous proceeding acquired a tension that was immedi-
ately felt. An expectant air permeated the spectators, the prose-
cutors, and the judge. It was two o'clock on the afternoon of
September 11, 1918. Thunderclouds had shut out the sun. Som-
ber shadows sprawled through the vacant windows and splashed
upon the Hoor. The avenging angels above the bench were
scarcely visible in the failing light. Debs' friends had seen him
the previous evening, sitting near an open window in the Gillsy
House, clad in pajamas, calmly smoking a cigar and writing
on a pad propped against his knees. He now rose, scraped a few
sheets into a single pile, and carried the papers in his left hand
as he walked toward the jury box.
All memory of the 1895 conspiracy trial faded from his mind
as he began to speak: "For the :first time in my life I appear be-
fore a jury in a court of law to answer for a crime . Stand-
ing before you, charged as I am with crime, I can yet look the
Court in the face, . . . for in my conscience, in my soul, there
is festering no accusation of guilt." His worn gray suit hanging
WORLD SOCIALISM 869
from his shoulders, his left arm 1imp at his side, his right hand
extended to punctuate his remarks, Debs spoke in a quiet but
firm voice: "Permit me to say in the first place that I am en-
tirely satisfied with the Court's ruling. I have no fault to find
with the district attorney or with the counsel for the prosecu-
tion."
"I wish to admit the truth of all tha t has been testified to in
this I have no disposition to deny anything that is
true. . I admit being opposed to the pres en t form of govern-
ment. I admit being opposed to the present social system. I am
doing what little I can, and have been for many years, to bring
about a change that shall do away with the rule of the great
body of people by a relatively small class and establish in this
country an industrial and social democracy."
When Debs began to explain why he was sympathetic to the
Russian Bolsheviks, the Federal attorney objected that his re-
marks were not relevant "to the evidence in the case." But
Judge Westenhaver, faithful to his agreement with Morris
Wolf, replied that he would ''permit the defendant to proceed
in his own way." Debs wen! on: "It may be that the much-
despised Bolsheviki may fail at last, but let me say to you that
they have written a chapter of glorious history. It will stand to
their eternal credit." Lenin and Stalin and Trotzky were being
denounced as "criminals and outlaws." But the vituperation
against George Washington and Samuel Adams and Patrick
Henry had not halted the American Revolution. The murder
of Elijah Lovejoy had merely hastened the abolition of slavery.
Thus the minority of today became the majority of tomorrow,
and found its vindication in universal acclaim.
Debs contended that he himself was charged with crime be-
cause he believed "as the revolutionary fathers did in their
time, that a change was due in the interests of the people, that
the time has come for a better form of government, an improved
system, a higher social order, a nobler humanity and a grander
civilization." The ruling class was helpless against "the rise of
the toiling and producing masses," said Debs: "You may hasten
the change; you may retard it; you can no more prevent it than
you can prevent the coming of the on the morrow."
S70
THE BENDING CROSS
Such intensity is normally reserved for love scenes, when one
person speaks to another of those visions that hold his every
wish. The spectators were hushed and frozen; the jurymen were
leaning forward as if to hear the next sentence before it was ut-
tered; the Federal attorney and the judge rested in their seats
of power. Gone now were the technicalities and the haggling;
gone was the ludicrous tone, as men clambered above the trivial
facts to reach a more concentrated atmosphere.
It was mere prattle to speak of brotherhood, Debs protested,
$) long as men tolerated a social system "in which we are a mass
of warring units, in which millions of workers have to fight one
another for jobs, and millions of business and professional men
have to fight one another for trade, for which we
have individual interests and each is striving to care for himself
alone without reference to his fellow men." This commercial
conflict led directly to armed conflict, and no amount of talk
could hide the truth. American workers had been paid so little
that they could not purchase the goods they produced. American
businessmen, in their search for 'profits, had been forced to bat-
tle for foreign markets. They had been opposed by the owning
classes of Germany, Austria, even of England and France. The
war had resulted from exploitation in every capitalist country.
Exploitation always led to militarism, as Eugene Debs had seen
even in time of peace--the Pullman boycott, the bull pens at
Cripple Creek, the Ludlow Massacre.
Debs asked the court for permission to present statistics on
profiteering during the war, so that this point would be estab-
lished beyond dispute. But Judge Westenhaver refused the
permission, saying that there would be "no consensus of opin-
ion or agreement on the matter. Thus Debs lost the chance to
say the one thing that, above all others, he truly wanted to say.
But Debs made his point in other ways. .He defended his right
to oppose a war that he thought was unjust: "The Mexican war
was bitterly condemned by Abraham Lincoln, by Charles
Sumner, by Daniel Webster and by Henry Clay." He defended
all those who had exercised this right during the World War-
Rose Pastor Stokes, Kate O'Hare. Big Bill Haywood, and the
Wobblies. He defended the St. Louis Manifesto because "I
WORLD SOCIALISM 871
believed then, as I believe now, that the statement colTectly
defined the attitude of the Socialist Party toward war. That
statement, bear in mind, did not apply to the people of this
cOuntry alone, but to the people of the world. It said, in effect,
to the people, especially to the workers, of all countries, 'Quit
going to war. Stop murdering one another for the profit and
glory of the ruling classes. Cultivate the arts of peace. Humanize
humanity. Civilize civilization.' That is the essential spirit and
the appeal of the much-hated, condemned St. Louis platform."
Eugene Debs had been talking for nearly two hours. The shad-
ows had completely blotted out the former streak of light across
the floor. His voice became mufBed: "I do not know, I cannot
tell, what your verdict may be; nor does it matter much, so
far as I am concerned. Gentlemen, I am the smallest part of this
trial I have lived long enough to appreciate my own personal
insignificance in relation to a great issue that involves the wel-
fare of the whole people. What you may choose to do to me will
be of small consequence after all I am not on trial here. There
is an infinitely greater issue that is being tried in this court,
though you may not be conscious of it. American institutions
are on trial here before a court of American citizens. The future
will tell."
As Debs returned slowly to his seat, Morris Wolf noticed that
several of the jurymen were crying. A Department of Justice
agent said to a reporter a t the press table: "You've got to hand
it to the old man. He came through clean."
Edwin S. Wertz, the Federal attorney, used the remainder of
the afternoon to sum up for the prosecution. He reviewed all of
the testimony that had been given, and attributed to Debs the
willful obstruction of the draft act. Eugene Victor Debs, said
the prosecutor, was "an old ewe" who was trying to lead his
flock of innocent followers into prison. Debs' professions of in-
ternational friendship were held up to ridicule. 'I'll tell you what
internationalism is," exclaimed Mr. Wertz. "Pitch all the na-
tionsinto one pot with the Socialists on top and you've got
internationalism." At these words the Socialists in the court-
room flushed; Judge Westenhaver looked restive; the Federal
attorney seemed pleased. Hadn't Debs said that he was as guilty
572
THE BENDING CROSS
as Rose Stokes, and hadn't Rose Stokes been convicted by I:t
jury in Kansas City? The conclusion was too apparent to re-
quire emphasis, but the prosecutor drew four heavy black lines
under it to enlighten the jury.
Court adjourned for the dayat the end of Wertz's summation.
As Eugene Debs emerged from the courtroom into the corridor a
young girl handed him a huge bouquet of red roses, and then
fainted at his feet.
Debs spent the evening at the Gillsy Ho.use, writing letters
and chatting with his friends. Max Eastman had asked him one
day if the trial was an emotional strain. "No," Debs had re-
plied, "it doesn't rest on my mind much. You see, if I'm sent
to jail it can't be for a very long time, whereas if you go it may
be an important part of your life. That's why my heart has been
with you boys all these months."
The next morning Judge Westenhaver gave his final charge
to the jury, and it was eminently fair. He instructed the jury
to find the defendant Not Guilty on those counts dealing with
ridicule of the Federal government. The counts remaining in
the indictment charged that Debs had willfully and knowingly
tried to obstruct the operation of the conscription act. Then the
jurymen struggled to their feet and hobbled out of the court-
room, carrying copies of the speech and the indictment. They
remained absent for six hours, while the defendant regaled his
friends with dozens of anecdotes about Abraham Lincoln.
Eugene Debs was fascinated by the Civil War PresidenL The
comparison between Lincoln and himself, drawn in 1894 by
John Swinton, had proved irresistible, until even Debs some-
times thought in those terms. Certainly there was a superficial
resemblance. Both men owned that peculiar mixture of crude-
ness and gallantry so common to the dirt farmers of the Corn
Belt. Long before 1000 De.bs had revealed Lincoln's gift for the
homespun epigram, as in his comment that a trade-union op-
ponent sounded .like the wind wailing around the corner of a
silo, or his more famous remark: "Corporate capital has re-
duced lab.or to a fluttering rag-a walking hunger-pang/' But
Debs showed small understanding in his attempts to remake
Lincoln in his own image. His stock of Lincoln lore included a
WORLD SOCIALISM
878
story about Lincom's visit to New Orleans in 1828. Seeing a
Negro girl auctioned from the block, Lincoln had firmly re-
solved: "If I ever get a chance I'll hit at the very foundations
of chattel slavery, and I'll hit it hard." That was the way Debs
told the story. Unfortunately it was not true at all. The leading
r61e in the drama was tailored for Eugene Debs, not for Abra-
ham Lincoln. But Debs' scholarship was not always so faulty.
One paragraph of his plea to the jury was faithfully, and perhaps
unconsciously, molded from John Brown's Final Address to the
Court.
Shortly before five o'clock the jurymen filed back into the
courtroom. The youngest among them, Cyrus H. Stoner, aged
fifty-eight years, rose to read the verdict. The inevitable words
were droned out. On three separate counts: "Guilty as charged
in the indictment." Judge Westenhaver fixed Saturday morn-
ing, September 14, as the time for passing sentence, and Debs
left the courtroom facing a possible prison term of sixty years.
Walking up the corridor, he said of the jury: "There is something
pathetic about dressed up faces-smug bodies. If they had been
dressed in rags it would have been all right. What a contrast
to turn toward the back of the court-room and find a little
group of beautiful Socialists, with stars for eyes-you can al-
ways tell them!"
Court being recessed on Friday, Debs spent the day in Akron
at the home of MIs. Marguerite Prevey. His lawyers insisted
that he should take advantage of his right to make another
speech before sentence was passed. Debs, tired of the whole pro-
ceeding, adamantly refused. A heated wrangle followed, and
finally Debs yielded. He ventured forth on a brief errand, and
then retired to a small room at the head of the stairs to write his
speech. When Morris Wolf went up to see Debs a few hours
later, the nature of the errand became obvious. A pint bottle of
bourbon. now sorely emaciated, was on the corner of the table.
Debs was angry at the Federal attorney. Mr. Wertz, in his
final summary. had referred scornfully to both Rose Pastor
Stokes and Kate O'Hare. Debs was now writing a bitter attack
on the prosecutor. Wolf objected that such a descent to per-
sonalities would obscure the real issues and make the entire trial
a burlesque. Debs glared at Wolf: "He isn't a friend of yours, is
her" Wolf tried to explain that he could do more for his client
if he did not alienate the Federal officials. Men like Wertz, said
the attorney, were mere hired hands who had no responsibility
for the proceedings, they were just trying to make a living.
Debs was not convinced, and there was another long argument.
Finally Wolf, close to despair, summoned Marguerite Prevey
to the room. She prevailed where Wolf had met with failure
and Debs agreed to delete all references to Wertz.
Then Debs had to write a new beginning for his speech. Back
in January, 1918, he had crowded his entire philosophy into a
single sentence that appeared in The Masses. He had used the
same phrases, changing but a single word, on the title page of
Labar and Freedom, a collection of his writings and speeches
published in 1916. He now returned to the original version and
began to write: "While there is a lower class ... "
When court opened on Saturday, the Federal attorney moved
for the imposition of sentence. The clerk asked if the defendant
would like to make a final statement. Eugene Debs again rose
from his chair and began talking as he moved toward the bench.
There were no notes to be gathered up, no papers to guide him,
but all that an honest man can learn in sixty years was contained
in his opening remark: "Your Honor, years ago I recognized my
kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I
was not one bit better than the meanest of the earth. I said then,
I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there
is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison,
I am not free."
Eugene Debs had already forgotten his promise to Morris
Wolf and to Ma..rguerite Prevey: "Everything in connection
with this case has been conducted upon a dignified plane, and
in a respectful and decent spirit-with just one exception. Your
Honor, my sainted mother inspired me with a reverence for
womanhood that amounts to worship. I can think with dis-
respect of no woman, and I can think with respect of no man
who can. I resent the manner in which the names of two noble
women were bandied in this court. The levity and the wanton-
WORLD SOCIALISM
875
ness in this instance was absolutely inexcusable. When 1 think of
what was said in this connection, 1 feel that when 1 pass a
woman, even though it be a sister of the street, 1 should take off
my hat and apologize for being a man."
Debs' friends -had long noticed that liquor made him even
more eloquent, more sensitive, more gentle--and it was true.
"In the struggle," he continued, "the -unceasing
tween the toilers and producers and their exploiters, 1 have
tried ... to serve those among whom I was born, with whom
1 expect to share my lot until the end of my days."
"I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and fac-
tories; I am thlnking of the women who, for a paltry wage, are
compelled to work out their lives; of the little children who, in
this system, are robbed of their childhood, and in their early,
tender years, are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon,
and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the ma-
chines while they themselves are being starved body and soul.
1 can see them dwarfed, diseased, stunted, their little lives
broken, and their hopes blasted, because in this high noon of our
twentieth century civilization money is still so much more im-
portant than human life. Gold is god and rules in the affairs of
men .... "
"I never more clearly comprehended than now the great
struggle between the powers of greed on the one hand and upon
the other the rising hosts of freedom. 1 can see the dawn of a
better day of humanity. The people are awakening. In due
course of time they will come into their own. . .. "
When the end came, Judge Westenha ver still sat, unshaken
and severe. The judge declared that he was second to no man in
his sympathy for the poor and suffering. But he was amazed by
the "remarkable self-delusion and self-deception of Mr. Debs
who assumes that he is serving humanity and the down-
trodden." Those who violate the law must suffer the penalties.
This applied with double force to those persons "within our
borders who would strike the sword from the hand of this na-
tion while she is engaged in defending herself against a foreign
and brutal power." Declaring himself "a conserver of the peace
876
THE BENDING CROSS
and a defender of the Constitution of the United States,"
Judge Westenhaver imposed a sentence of ten years in prison
upon)he Socialist leader.
Many spectators scarcely heard the sentence. They had been
transported into a cleaner, better land by the speech of Eugene
Debs, which caused many a strangled gasp in the courtroom.
He had appeared as a gigantic bridge, a man who stood with
one foot fumly anchored in the present. the other in the future,
while the multitude walked across his shoulders. A portion of
humanity felt purified in the sacremental vision of Eugene
Victor Debs:
Let the people take heart and hope everywhere,
for the cross is bending, .
the midnight is passing.
and joy cometh with the morning.
CHAPTER XIX
[ 1 ]
W
ITH the exception of the Pullman boycott, no
incident in Debs' career aroused so much comment
as the Canton speech and the subsequent trial
Thousands of people who neither knew nor cared about his
Socialist beliefs vaguely understood that he was sent to prison
because he opposed the World War. Some men adopted the
romantic viewpoint that it was a transmuted Eugene Debs who
faced the jury in'" a Cleveland courtroom. So gradually, over a
number of years, the events of .1918 came to form an important
part of the Debs Legend. Typical are the comments of Heywood
Broun: "Debs .. was never the brains of his party. I never
met him, but I read many of his speeches, and most of them
seemed to be second-rate utterances. But when his great mo-
ment came a miracle occurred. Debs made a speech to the
judge and jury at Columbus after his conviction, and to me it
seems one of the most beautiful and moving passages in the
English language. He was for that one afternoon touched with
inspiration. If anybody told me that tongues of fire danced upon
his shoulders as he spoke, I would believe it."
This statement by Broun probably missed the main point.
Debs' speech in Cleveland was a culmination, not an explosive
miracle. Given his early convictions, given his intimate ac-
quaintance with the workingmen of America, given his two
decades in the Socialist movement, he inevitably faced his ac-
cusers in a Federal courtroom. Arrived there, he said nothing
that he had not said in the past. Even his phrases, his images,
had been accumulated during countless appearances on the
lecture platform. The importance of Eugene Debs derives from
the road he followed to reach that courtroom in Cleveland. not
from a single afternoon when "tongues of fire danced upon his
shoulders as he spoke."
377
Equally popular was Broun's belief that Debs "was never the
brains of his party." This description was endorsed by most
Socialist leaders, whether radical or reformist. Although they
acknowledged Debs' "spiritual" leadership, they steadfastly
contended that he was no thinker or theoretician. This too be-
came an unquestioned segment of the Debs Legend, but it seems
just as mistaken as Broun's other concept about Debs. Cer-
tainly Eugene Debs was untutored in both literature and sci-
ence, lacked the will for serious scholarship, was unable to
reaclt decisions by theoretical study. Sometimes he reacted to
new conditions with astonishing tardiness. His flirtation with
the IWW badly retarded the growth of industrial unionism. His
opposition to reform parties hindered the development of a
working-class political movement. He misjudged the plight of
the Negro people. His failure to insist on a united Socialist
movement had tragic consequences in 1917.
But in spite of these faults Eugene Debs deserves to be known
as the political leader of American socialism. He clung with
stubborn insistence to the basic principles of Marxian socialism.
He showed an uncanny ability to foresee issues and to devise
remedies. He first raised the standard against the prosecution
of Bill Haywood and Fred Warren and the McN amaraSj against
intervention in Mexico; against participation in the World War.
He played a part in hundreds of hard-fought strikes. He hurled
his waning energies into the struggle for American recognition
of Soviet Russia. Debs' sole purpose was to inspire a working-
class revolt against the' capitalist system, and his success was
truly remarkable. He kindled the fires of a newer hope for mil-
lions of his fellow citizens.
And through all of these temporary battles, Debs held to the
twin objectives that he had announced before 1900, industrial
unionism and revolutionary politics. No other prominent radical
was entitled to the same boast. The right wing of the Party had
become enamored with reform platforms and machine methods;
the left wing had sought the illusory success of anarcho-syndi-
calism; Debs had stanchly opposed both trends. He had con-
sistently been among the first to capitalize on immediate is-
sues, and he had never forgotten his ultimate goal of socialism.
WORLD SOCIALISM
879
Debs' career is startling, not because he made mistakes, but
because he made so few of them.
The attacks on Eugene Debs were directed against his as-
sociates as well as his principles. In 1910, for instance, Ernest
Untermann said of Debs: '''Nearly all of his advisers in the labor
movement have turned out to be Certainly the facts
lend weight to the charge that Debs was both naive and senti-
mental in his estimates of other people. His cordiality toward
the prowar Socialists, even after they had deserted the Party,
is illustrative of the value he placed on personal friendship and
the former records of his associates.
A second explanation, however, is needed to complete the
story. Eugene Debs was neither a purist nor a moralist, but a
trade-union leader and a Socialist. He firmly believed that basic
changes in human behavior would follow rather than precede
the establishment of socialism. So he took help where he could
find it, balancing the risks against the benefits. These colleagues
inevitably acquired a measure of power, and some of them used
it to their personal a!ivantage. In the Socialist Party this policy
led to chaos; in the American Railway Union it led to success.
No criticism of Debs is involved in the splotchy records of such
men as George Howard; actually it is a tribute that Debs was
able to use Howard's abilities for a constructive purpose.
[ [2 ]
AFTER JUDGE WIETENHA VER imposed sentence on Eugene Debs,
the defense attorneys announced their intention of challenging
the Espionage Act and the conviction of Debs in the Supreme
Court. As Debs stepped into the corridor, he was approached
by Clyde R Miller, the Plain-Dealer reporter who had testified
for the prosecution. "]\fr. Debs," Miller began, "you got ex-
actly the sentence you deserve, but I am sorry it had to be you.
You are such a decent guy."
Debs smiled and placed his hand on Miller's shoulder: "Lis-
ten, son, I want to say something to you. First, I want to thank
you for your testimony. It was straightforward, clear and ac-
curate. . .. Because I hold my opinion I am going to Atlanta
THE BENDING CROSS
for twenty years. Because you hold your opinion you are going
to France. I don't know that I shall ever live out my sentence.
You don't know that you will ever get back from France. But
if you do get back, and if I get out of prison and we should meet,
what do you say we agree now to sit down togeth.er and tell
each other which one of us was most nearly right or wrong about
this war."
"That seemed fair," Miller recalled, "and I said so. We shook
hands. He left for Atlanta and I for France."
Actually, however, Debs returned from Cleveland to await
the results of his appeal to the Supreme Court. Under the terms
imposed by Judge Westenhaver he was forbidden to venture
beyond Terre Haute and the Northern District of Ohio. The
Sociaiist Party of Ohio arranged more than twenty meetings
for him in the northeastern part of the state. Debs was eagerly
preparing to leave Terre Haute when the outbreak of a serious
influenza epidemic made it necessary to cancel all of the engage
A
ments. This untoward event frustrated Debs' thirst' for ac-
tivity: it also threatened financial ca.lamity. His income had
practically ended fifteen months earlier at the outbreak of the
war; but he and Theodore had continued to maintain their office
in Terre Haute, handle their voluminous correspondence, mail
out thousands of free pamphlets. By the autumn of 1918 Debs
was more than a thousand dolla,rs in debt, with no change in
sight.
But he accepted his situation and settled down to a quiet
life at home. He had bel!ln in Terre Haute only a few days when
he read in Upton Sinclair's Magazine the first irutallment of
Sinclair's new novel, Jimmie Higgins. In this novel Debs, who
appears all The Candidate, finds new strength and devotion
from his brief contact with the mythical rank-and-file Socialist
invented by Ben Hanford. and now cleverly elaborated by
Sinclair. Debs was delighted by this fictional likeness of the
men who personified the socialist movement. "JIMMIE fiG-
GINS," Debs wrote to the author, "is the chap who is always
on the job: who does all the needed work that no one else will
do: who never grumbles, never finds fault, and is never dis-
couraged. All he asks is the privilege of doing his best for the
WORLD SOCIALISM'
881
cause where it is most needed. . . The pure joy it gives him
to serve the cause is his only reward. . . . Almost anyone can
be THE CANDIDATE, and almost anyone will do for a
speaker, but it takes the rarest of qualities to produce a JIMMIE
HIGGINS. These qualities are developed in the 'lower class'
only. They are denied those who how not the trials and priva-
tions, the bitter sMuggle, the heartache and despair of the vic-
tims of man's inhumanity to his less fortunate fellow-man."
Even as Debs was writing this letter, its calm assurance was
being fulfilled in Terre Haute. The home of Noble C. Wilson.
who had managed Debs' campaign in 1916. was raided by Fed-
eral agents. They confiscated large quantities of literature and
several letters from Debs; this material was never returned.
They carefully inspected a box of charcoal tablets in the belief
that they might have found dynamite. Wilson warned them to
be carefnl; they might blow their noses off.
Shubert Sebree, the Terre Haute glass worker who had been
nominated for Congress when Debs refused to run in 1918, was
visited by the foreseen reprisals. Less than a month after he ac-
cepted the nomination, he was discharged from his job, deserted
by his union, and blacklisted by the employers of Terre Haute.
He was forced to move to Danville, Dlinois, taking with him his.
wife, a young son, and a dependent mother. Eugene Debs was
not alone in his willingness to make sacrifices for his convictions,
and he well hew it. "I am more than sorry but not a bit sur-
prised," he wrote to Sebree, "that you have been hounded out
of town. It is the fate of such true souls as you and I how you
can bear it. You were too good and real a union man to last
among these miserable pretenders. But your day will come as
sure as truth prevails. I know how gladly you would 'serve my
sentence and my heart goes to you in love and gratitude."
It was true of Eugene Debs, as it was true of Jimmie Higgins,
that "the pure joy it gives him to serve the cause is his only re-
ward." After nearly twenty years as The Candidate, Debs still
regarded himself as merely a small part of a mighty movement.
He had never built a personal machine in the Socialist Pa,rty;
nor had he ever sought honors or power for himself. But the
praise of his comrades, the confidence given him by men of like
882
THE BENDING CROSS
mind, always warmed his soul and inspired him to greater
efforts. Thus he gained considerable satisfaction from John
Reed's report of their meeting on July Fourth in Terre Haute.
"I have read and been deeply moved by your fine article in the
September Lwerator," Debs wrote to Reed. "You write differ-
ently than anyone else and your style is most appealing to me.
There is a living something that breathes and throbs in all you
say."
Eugene Debs and John Reed found common cause in their
belief in the Bolshevik Revolution. During the autumn and
winter of 1918, these two men did all in their power to halt the
American intervention in Russia. Reed published his account
of the events in St. Petersburg, Ten Days That Shook the World,
and gave dozens of speeches based on his eyewitness knowledge
of the revolution. Eugene Debs, speaking "as a Socialist, as a
revolutionist, and as a Bolshevist, if you please," issued a
series of stirring appeals for support to the Soviet government.
In November of 1918, when the American armies had invaded
Russia, Debs publicly pledged his aid to the Communist coun-
try:
Comrades of the RussIan Soviet and the Bolshevik Republic,
we salute and honor you on this first. a.nniyersary .of
revolutionary triumph, the greatest ill POInt of histonc SIgnifi-
cance and far-reaching in:B.uence in the annals of the race ....
The chief glory of your revolutionary is tha you
have preserved inviolate the fundamental.prmclples of Inter-
national Socialism and refused to comprOmIse. . .
You . . . are that . the working-class .
shall not allow itself to be used to install some intermediate
class into power and perpetuate its own slavery and degrada-
tion ...
We pledge you . to striv,: w:!th all f:o
your inspiring example by our Impenalisbc capital-
ism, driving our plutocratic e?'PIOlters and from
power and establishing the workmg class repubhc, the Common-
wealth of Comrades.
Nikolai Lenin, it soon became known, fully reciprocated
Debs' respect and admiration. In December, 1918, the Class
Struggle, an organ of the new left wing in the Socialist Party,
WORLD SOCIALISM 888
published Lenin's "Letter to American Workers," which had
been written the previous August. "I also recall," Lenin had
written, "the words of one of the most beloved leaders of the
American proletariat, Eugene Debs, who wrote ... that he,
Debs, would rather be shot than vote for loans for the present
criminal and reactionary imperialist war; that he, Debs, knew
of only one holy and, from the standpoint of the proletariat,
legal war, namely: the war against the capitalists, the war for
the liberation of mankind from wage slavery!"
Meanwhile the war had ended. A gigantic strike wave was
sweeping the United States. The split between the left and right
wings of the Socialist Party was daily growing deeper and
sharper, based primarily on a difference in attitudes toward the
Bolshevik Revolution. Peace negotiations were being conducted
at Versailles. And Eugene Debs was denied an active r6le in
these titanic events because he had suffered another nervous
and physical breakdown. He was held to his home in Terre
Haute, issuing an occasional blast at the meetings in Versai1les,
pleading for American recognition of the Soviet government.
Early in December he recovered sufficiently to make a few
speeches in Ohio, but both his health ana his financial plight
were continuous cause for concern. Debs was scarcely aware
of these problems; a New Year's card to a friend said: "I love
and salute you at the dawn of the N ew Year and the New Era."
During the early months of 1919 Debs continued to give oc-
casional speeches in northeastern Ohio and to write articles for
the Socialist press. Then, on March 10, 1919, his conviction was
upheld by the United States Supreme Court in a remarkable
opinion. Mr. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, one week earlier,
had declared that free speech could be abridged only in case of
"a clear and present danger" to the public safety. But Mr.
Justice Holmes, in writing the majority opinion in the Debs
case, did not even mention the doctrine that he himself had
invented. Nor did the Justice have much sympathy with those
who criticized his apparent inconsistency. "I am beginning,"
he wrote to a friend on April 5, "to get stupid letters of protest
against a decision that Debs, a noted agitator, was rightly con-
victed of obstructing the recruiting service so far as the law is'
THE BENDING CROSS
concerned. There was a lot of jaw aboutfree speech, which
I dealt with somewhat summarily 'in an earlier case ... "
Unless the President chose to exercise clemency, Eugene
Debs was now certain to go to prison. Debs, however, was singu-
larly unmoved by his impending fate. The day after the Supreme
Court decision was announced, he issued a broadside to the
newspapers:
The decision is perfectly consistent with the character of the
Supreme Court as a ruling class tribunal. It could not have been
otherwise. So far as I am personally concerned, the decision is
of small consequence ....
Great issues are not decided by courts, but by the people. I
have no concern in what the coterie of begowned corporation
lawyers in Washington may decide in my case. The court of
final resort is the people, and that court will be heard from in
due time .
As the harsh Indiana winter began to give way to a mild
spring, a Terre Haute barber casually commented to a customer:
"Well, it's coming along to Easter time, and we're getting ready
for another crucifixion. t, And on April 12, 1919, Eugene Debs
received a phone call from the Federal attorney in Cleveland.
ordering him to report at once for delivery to prison.
[ 1J ]
THE MOMENT had arrived. The telephone call came at eleven
o'clock in the morning, and Debs intended to catch an overnight
train to Cleveland. He passed the day calmly making prepara-
tions for an extended absence. Hundreds of telegrams and s p ~
cialletters wished him good fortune, and he answered as many
of them as possible. He walked around Terre Haute saying
good-by to old friends. It seemed pleasant to stroll through the
warm, clean air of the Indiana springtime.
David Kal'S1}.er, a young reporter for the New York Can, had
arranged to spend the day with Debs and accompany him to
prison. Karsner asked if Debs had thought about the possibility
of a pardon. "I don't know anything about one," Debs replied.
"I have asked for none, nor shall I. I stand on the threshold
WORLD SOCIALISM
885
of going to prison with malice toward none, and with perfect
faith in the rectitude of my course and an absolute confidence
in the justice and ultimate triumph of the cause to which I
have gladly given my services. To ask a pardon would be to con-
fess guilt."
"During my incarceration," Debs added, "my comrades will
be true and my enemies will be satisfied, and therefore, as far
as I am concerned, all will be well with the world."
At nine o'clock that evening, Debs was sitting in a large rock-
ing chair in his parlor, quietly telling jokes and smoking a cigar.
Gathered around him were Kate, Theodore and his family,
Kate's mother Mrs. Baur, who had lived with Kate and Eugene
for several years, and Arthur Baur the druggist. A vase on the
table held a gigantic bouquet of American Beauty roses, which
had been sent by an elderly Irish neighbor. "She is a Roman
Catholic," Debs said musingly, "and every morning for many
years she has prayed for me." Karsner noticed that Debs "blew
a ring of blue smoke and smiled sadly."
"Well, Eugene," Kate broke in, "we had better start." Theo-
dore went to get his brother's coat, and Debs noticed that Mrs.
Baur was weeping. He went over to pat her cheek and whisper,
"It is all right, mother; it will come out all right in the end."
Debs had vetoed the proposal of the Socialist Party and the
Central Labor Union to hold a demonstration as his train left
Terre Haute, but more than two hundred of his friends had
gathered at the station. A coal miner emerged from the crowd
and grabbed Debs' arm: "We're with you, Gene-by God, we're
with you to the last man." Debs kissed the man's cheek and
murmured, "I know it. Until the last drop we'll stand together,
all of us. Only by standing together can we hope for victory.
You boys take care of the outside and rn take care of the inside."
As the train left the station Debs threw a kiss to his wife.
Karsner later asked how Kate was bearing up under the strain.
"She has stood shoulder to shoulder with me through every
stonn that has beat upon us:' Debs replied, "and she is standing
:firm now."
Debs, Karsner, and Arthur Baur prepared to spend the night
on the train, but Debs was unable to sleep. Until nearly four
o'clock he smoked cigars and talked to Karsner. He seemed in
the best of spirits; his manner was even jovial. Karsner chanced
to mention that his imprisonment would accelerate the move-
ment to nominate him for the Presidency again, and Debs waved
it aside. He still had no desire to be a leader. ''Very often," he
explained, "a leader is, in fact, a misleader. It is the workers, the
men and women who do all the hard work in every line of trade
and profession-in building up their owri. Socialist branches and
their unions, to whom all the credit, homage, honor and glory
is due."
At five o'clock on Palm Sunday, April 18, Debs was already
awake and fully dressed. He had slept only an hour. As his train
crawled into the railroad yards in Cleveland, he dictated to
David Karsner a statement "for my comrades throughout the
United States." Although his arrest had been announced only
eighteen hours earliei', the streets of Cleveland were already
covered with dodgers printed in scarlet ink, announcing that
Eugene Debs would speak at a protest meeting that afternoon.
The meeting was held as scheduled-fifteen thousand workers
stood in Free Speech Park and sang the Marseillaise-but Debs
was not present. He .was already halfway to Wheeling, West
Virginia.
Debs had been met at the depot in Cleveland by Mrs. Mar-
guerite Prevey and her husband, and they enjoyed a gala break-
fast. Then the party moved to the Gillsy House, where it was
joined by Alfred Wagenknecht and J. Louis Engdahl. Debs was
writing a note to his wife when two. United States deputy
marshals arrived to escort him to the Federal building. The
government authorities, in order to forestall any
along the route, conducted the job in the utmost secrecy. Debs,
his Socialist companions, and the Federal marshal, drove to a
suburban station before catching a train to Youngstown. From
Youngstown the entire journey was made by interurban over a
circuitous route.
Just before they arrived in Youngstown, Debs commented
that interurbans were a rather slow means of transport. ''Well,''
,the marshal smiled, "we can make an all-day job of it."
''0 Po yes," De bs quipped back, "we have ten years in which to
WORLD SOCIALIS M 587
get there." As the prisoner reminisced with his companions, his
eye chanced to land on the union button in his conductor's
lapel He slumped back in his seat and commented: "Were I to
engage in satire, I would say how ironical it seems that I, who
have been forty years in the service of organized labor, am now
being taken to prison by union men." Every scene represented
a memory, as when the sight of the Palm Sunday picnics caused
Debs to remark: "What a beautiful day it is. I have been all
over this part of the country and have talked to thousands of
these miners."
A long day hopping on and off trolleys exhausted the sixty-
four-year-old Debs, and he was asleep in his seat when the group
arrived at Moundsville, West Virginia. The Federal prisons
were filled to overflowing, and it was here in the state prison
that Debs would be incarcerated. Eugene Debs dictated his
final statement to his Socialist escort: "I enter the prison doors
a flaming revolutionist-my head erect, my spirit untamed and
my soul unconquerable." He then picked up his heavy suitcase.
which he had refused to turn over to his companions, threw his
arm around the shoulder of the Federal marshal, and passed
under the giant turrets.
On his first day in prison Eugene Debs received a message
from his brother Theodore: "They have your body behind
prison walls but your unconquerable spirit, radiant as a sun-
burst, scars humanity's luminous heights a million miles beyond
the foul touch of filthy hypocrites and their prostituted merce-
naries. Your unwavering fidelity to principle, your unfaltering
love and devotion to the cause of the crushed and oppressed will
be an unceasing inspiration. I was never so proud of you. My
arms are about you, old pal, and will be through time and
eternity."
Warden Joseph Z. Terrell was quick to appreciate the unusual
qualities of his new inmate. The prison rules allowed only one
visitor and two letters a month, but Debs was permitted an
unlimited number of visitors, and he could write as many letters
as he wished. He was also allowed to receive the Socialist news-
papers after he promised that he would not distribute them to
the other prisoners. Although he was assigned to a light job in
the prison hospit.al, the assignment was merely on the records;
actually he was free to do as he pleased. The door to his ce11 was
never locked, and he wandered at will through the prison yard.
Eugene Debs felt so guilty about these extra privileges that
he asked to be put to work at manual labor. "I want to earn my
board here, at any rate," he laughingly said. This is probably
the only request from Debs that Warden Terrell ever denied.
Most of Debs' time was passed in reading, talking with his
guests, chatting with the other inmates. He found great pleasure
in several books by Upton Sinclair, and David Karsner one day
found him engrossed in Ten Days That Shook the World, John
Reed's account of the Bolshevik revolution. Debs was perfeetly
reconciled to his situation. "I'm here for a purpose," he wrote
to Horace Traubel, "and 1 know how to be patient. The lessons
1 am learning here are of inestimable value to me and 1 am not
sony that my lot is cast for a time among <Les Miserables.'
Yours until the stars go out, Gene."
Within the prison Debs quickly found ways to help the other
men. Almost immediately he became father-conIessor and un-
official chaplain to the prisoners, writing letters for them, giving
them advice and encouragement. He enjoyed and believed in
his new role, which actually was not different from the old. To a
visitor he commented:
The very lowest and most degenerate of criminals is not a: whit
worse than L The difference between us is against me, not him.
All my life 1 have been the favored one, the creature of fortune.
We both did the best we could, and the worst we knew how, and
1 am the beneficiarr of that society of which he is the victim.
. 1 belong in prison. 1 e ~ o n g where men are made to suffer
for the wrongs committed against them by a brutalizing sys-
tem. . . The roots of the social system are here. They are
nowhere else.
One day A. W. Moskowitz, Debs' bondsman, and Alfred
Dosch, a Cleveland history teacher, called at Moundsville. They
were immediately shown into the warden's office, where a guard
was instructed to take them to Debs. They walked through
much of the prison and finally emerged into a courtyard which
held a small cottage. This cottage had been used by the prison
WORLD SOCIALISM
889
doctor, but it was now occupied by the newly appointed soul.
doctor. Eugene Debs was standing in front of his private man-
sion, deep in conversation with another prisoner. At the sight of
his friends he hastily finished his business, swooped across the
courtyard and threw his arms. around Moskowitz and Bosch.
Debs reached down into his pocket for the key to the cottage
and invited his guests to enter. He then chanced to see the
guard, who had remained at a respectful distance. ''Won't you
come in too?" he smilingly said to his keeper, then unlocked the
door and the four men entered the cottage. Throughout an ex-
tended conversation, the guard kept a discreet silence.
As the two guests left by way of the warden's office, the
warden said to them: "He's a great man, isn't her"
Eugene Debs learned that other persons than the American
Socialists still remembered him. Soon after his imprisonment,
the Bolshevik government had tried to win his release in ex-
change for an American citizen held for sabotage in Russia, but
the negotiations failed.
The idy1lic life at MoundsviHe ended quickly. On the morning
of June 13, 1919, just two months after he arrived, he was told
that he was being transferred to the Federal prison in Atlanta.
Georgia. This transfer was widely regarded as a malicious act by
the Administration in Washington, but the actual explanation
seems to be otherwise. Any institution holding Federal prisoners
was required to have a certain ratio of guards. The state of
West Virginia protested that they were not paid enough to make
it possible to hire these added guards. The Federal authorities
chose to withdraw their prisoners rather than pay the added
board bil1s requjred by the state. Certainly the warden at
MoundsviHe tried to ease the hardships of the transfer. In a
letter to the warden at Atlanta, Joseph Z. Terrell said of Debs:
"I never in my life met a kinder man. He is forever thinking of
others, trying to serve them, and never thinking of himself."
CHAPTER XX
[ 1 ]
L
in prison has its own mood, its own tempo. It re-
sembles a giant in the t:vilight, moving without
end on a course wIthout meamng. Wrenched from the
normalities of home and family, the inmates are confined by a
and hideous pattern. Some few contrive to keep a
of purpose. The others find themselves on a flat and deathly
expanse. The need for decision and conscious purpose are for-
gotten. All beauty and significance disappear. Pain also dis-
appears, save only the dull throbbing of the continuation of
existence. Yesterday is today, and tomorrow shall be no differ-
ent. All days are one, all the same. This lack of novelty, reaching
its most exaggerated form in the prison, makes men sensitive to
the smallest change, thirsty for it. Thus the prison grapevine.
While Debs was in quarantine during his first week in Atlanta,
the grapevine was fairly singing with news of his arrival. The
other prisoners were not only eager to meet Debs; they also
thought his presence would tend to secure better treatment for
all of them. In the words of one inmate, Eugene Debs in a prison
was "like putting perfume in a stall." Finally the disinherited
had a spokesman.
Nor were they disappointed. Within a few weeks after his ar-
rival in Atlanta, Debs had forced a concession from the
ties. One of the prison rules prescribed attendance at chapel for
every prisoner. Eugene Debs attended the services only once;
he was repelled by the sight of guards walking around the chapel
with their clubs swinging. Reminded of his childhood visit to a
Terre Haute cathedral, Debs declared that he would not observe
the rule. The prison authorities, thus meeting an attitude of
rigid defiance, announced that attendance would no longer be
compulsory. Attuned to a fine sensitivity, the other inmates also
noticed that the guards now tried to modulate their voices and
were less free with their nightsticks.
390
WORLD SOCIALIS M 891
Eugene Debs could have had almost the same privileges in
Atlanta that he had enjoyed in Moundsville. His correspondence
was severely limited, but he was permitted to receive the radical
newspapers and an abnormal number of visitors. In compliance
with the letter from Warden Terrell, Warden Fred G. Zerbst
offered Debs a clerical job in the hospital. Debs turned down the
offer and was assigned to the clothing warehouse. He also re-
fused to wear ordinary blue jeans and insisted that he wear
prison stripes like the other inmates.
The benign figure of Number 9653. ambling around with his
hands thrust deep in his hip pockets, became a familiar sight in
the prison yard. He was usually surrounded by a cluster of other
prisoners, all of them struggling to present their problems. A seat
next to Eugene Debs became the place of honor at the Sunday
baseball games. For one thing, Debs always had extra tobacco.
He received a great many packages from friends and sympa-
thizers, and the contents were freely distributed among the
other prisoners. When this supply proved inadequate, Debs him-
self stopped smoking so that he could give a way his tobacco
ration. When he had been in the prison less than a month the
other inmates began calling him Little Jesus.
Debs' personal prestige worked to the advantage of the eight
other political prisoners. The inmates (lbserved a very rigid
caste system, in which the bank robbers refused to associate
with sneak thieves; the thieves snubbed the counterfeiters; and
the ''bolshies,'' as all political prisoners were called, ranked at
the absolute bottom of the This division between the
political prisoners and the other inmates was based on two
tors: the criminals understood that anybody caught talking to a
radical would lose favor with the authorities, and the radicals
understood that anybody who informed against themselves
would gain favor with the authorities. This mutual distrust
tended to be obliterated by the presence of Debs. He belonged to
all factions and all cliques. He avoided only the sexual perverts,
whom he sadly described "sick men." His protective feeling
extended to everybody, but two men became his personal
vorites.
A Wobblie from Ohio was christened by Debs as Duke the
THE BENDING CROSS
Beak, due to his formal manner and prominent nose. This man
had been sent to Atlanta merely because of his membership in
the rwW. Duke, after several months in the prison tailor shop,
managed to be transferred to the prison orchestra, where he
played violin. This transfer earned him much derisive treatment
from Debs, who jokingly commented on the propriety of a radi-
cal scheming for his own promotion. Soon after this incident
another Ohioan who had held up a post office, became furious
at the Duke. He was almost angry enough to start a fight. "n
you weren't a bolshie," screamed the stick-up InaIl. '"I'd kick
the hell out of you."
Debs' other favorite was a Mexican general who had fought
with the revolutionary Zapatistas. General Nicholas was con-
fined in the tent colony which held the tubercular inmates. Al-
though Debs hesitated to take advantage of the comparative
freedom offered him, he seized every chance to wa.1k down to the
tents and discuss the international revolution with his Mexican
colleague. The General, who had been captured on one of his
many attempts to smuggle ammunition into Mexico, was very
bitter about his confinement in Atlanta; presumably he would
have preferred a jail in his native country. But he had great
respect for Debs, whom he called itself!' Debs was
always interested in the Mexican revolution, which he had tried
to aid in many ways, and he delighted in the General's descrip-
tions of the beautiful new Mexico which they had tried to build.
All of the political prisoners traded their tobacco for chocolate
bars, and Debs cat'l'ied this chocolate down to the tubercular
patient.
It was not long, however. before Debs himself was in wretched
health. The food was so unpalatable that two weeks passed
before he could force himself to eat, in spite of his hard labor
in the prison warehouse. For fifteen hours each day he was con-
fined with five other men in a small cell, which Was stilling in
the fierce heat of the Southern summer. Alexander Berkman, the
anarchist, reported in October upon his release from Atlanta
that Debs was very near to death, due to a combination of
lumbago, heart trouble, blinding and kidney trouble
caused by the prison food. No hint of these difficulties ever came
WORLD SOCIALISM
from Debs. His letters to. Theodore were always cheerful and
optimistic, and he never complained to his visitors.
But Warden Zerbst was determined that his most famous
prisoner would not die while in his custody. He abruptly re-
moved Debs from the clothing warehouse and transferred him
to a light job in the hospital, where he was given a private room.
The prison grapevine reported that Number 9658 was receiving
a certain amount of whiskey for reasons of health. It became
known that Debs was entertaining visitors in the private office
of the warden, and even that he made occasional trips to Atlanta.
in an automobile.
Surprisingly, these favors were not resented by the other in-
mates, who were deeply disturbed by the possibility that Debs
might die. One elderly Italian grieved: "Mista Debs was justa
like God. He try to show me how to speak English, but I didn't
like it. Now I'm sorry." A political prisoner roared that the im-
prisonment of Debs was a bigger crime than the American in-
vasion of Russia. The radicals warned the other inmates not to
bother Debs aU the time; that did a little good. Under the in-
fluence of all this coddling, Debs gradually regained his strength.
Finally it became apparerit that the grave danger had passed,
but the Socialist leader was still a very sick man.
The extreme solicitude for Debs' health was not entirely un-
selfub.. The prison administration feared the public commotion
that might result from his death, and the other inmates were
anxious to preserve his wholesome influence on the authorities.
The radicals, for their part, were trying to maintain their chief
contact with the outside world. Debs managed to slip surrep-
tiously to the other political prisoners some of the radical news-
papers that he received. His stream of visitors brought a week-
by-week account of political and trade-union developments,
which were moving at a rapid clip during the years after the war.
[ fJ J
FOR EUGENE DEBS, the most fateful of these developments was
the final disintegration of the Socialist Party. The right-wing
leaders, who still controlled the official policies, hurriedly dis-
sociated themselves from the Russian Bolsheviks during 1918,
and many of them shifted to a tacit support of the war effort.
That year the most radical demand in the Socialist Congres-
sional platform called for the nationalization of public utilities
and basic industry "as speedily as is consistent with public
order and security, and allowing the utmost possible degree of
local autonomy." The left wing found three critical flaws in this
program: It did not call for the transfer of political power to the
workers; It seemed to attach more importance to "public order
and security" than to socialism; The provision for local auton-
omy hinted at a protest against central economic planning-a
major socialist device.
In 1918 the left wing had begun to organize as an independent
force within the Party, holding its own conventions and starting
its own newspapers. Two months before Debs went to Mounds-
ville, a meeting in New York issued the Left-Wing Manifesto,
which demanded that all reform planks be dropped from the
Party platform: "The party must teach, propagate and agitate
exclusively for the overthrow of capitalism and the establish-
ment of socialism through proletarian dictatorship." The left
wing also demanded Socialist participation in the Third Com-
munist International, which was founded in March of 1919.
But the right-wing leaders, led by Morris Hillquit and Victor
Berger, ridiculed the left-wing emphasis on the inevitable
use of violence by the capitalists against the revolutionaries.
The destruction of their newspapers, the jailing of their leaders,
and the suppression of free speech and assembly had not shaken
the belief of these leaders that the change to socialism would be
gradual and peaceful.
The showdown fight between the two factions came in the
national referendum to elect the Party officials. The left wing
won twelve of the fifteen seats on the National Executive Com-
mittee; John Reed was elecied international delegate over
Berger, and Kate O'Hare international secretary over Hillquit.
But the existing National Committee, controlled by the re-
formers, declared the election void and refused to yield office.
In order to make this policy effective, the National Committee
then expelled all of the left-wing groups-the foreign language
WORLD SOCIALISM 895
federations, and the entire state organizations of Ohio, Michi-
gan, and Massachusetts.
Half of the expelled members, including the language feder-
ations, the Michigan organization, and most of the Ohio organi-
zation, favored the immediate formation of a Communist party.
But the other thirty thousand expelled Socialists, led by John
Reed, Alfred Wagenknecht, and Ben Gitlow. advocated an at-
tempt to capture the Socialist Party for the left-wing program.
So they presented themselves at the Socialist national conven-
tion, which met in Chicago on August 31, 1919. When they were
denied admission there, they formed the Com-
munist Labor Party. On the same day the extreme left wing
founded the Communist Party, led by Charles E. Ruthenberg of
Ohio. On August 31 there was only one organization; the follow-
ing day there were three, which at once began to war among
themselves. The Communist Party charged that the Communist
Labor Party still held the reformist notions of the right wing;
the Communist Labor Party held that the Communists were
sectarian and dogmatic.
This wrangling and confusion prevented the radical parties
from taking an effective part in the popular battles that followed
the war. The AFL in 1918 had adopted a plan, introduced by
William Z. Foster, to organize the steel industry. The campaign
was greeted with startling enthusiasm by the steel workers and
with last-ditch resistance by the employers. In September of
1919 the organizing committed ordered an industry-wide strike
vote. Samuel Gompers urged Woodrow Wilson to arbitrate the
dispute, but the President was unable to persuade the corpora-
tions even to confer with the union. Gompers then tried to halt
the strike vote, but he failed. On September 22, 1919, more than
three hundred sixty-five thousand workers walked out of the
steel mills.
Six weeks la ter a half million coal miners went on strike. When
a Federal court enjoined the United Mine Workers from paying
any strike benefits or aiding the strike by "messages of en-
couragement or exhortation," President John L. Lewis ordered
the miners back to work. Eugene Debs was disgusted when he
read this news in Atlanta. Debs later said that Lewis' compli-
ance with the injunction was "a cowardly act. . . That was
thetimewhen Lewis should have shown his real leadership of the
miners." The steel strike also was called off on January 8, 1920.
Its defeat was mainly caused by the jealousies and inaction of
the AFL officials, by the return to work of the skilled members of
craft unions, and by the importation of thirty thousand Negro
strikebreakers, who still were not allowed to join most trade
unions.
The open-shop war by the employers flared on a thousand
fronts, with the Great Steel Strike serving as the stimulus for a
fierce antiradical hysteria. On January 2, 1920, the Department
of Justice raided meetings throughout the country, arresting
2,758 men and women, holding 556 aliens for deportation. In
Massachusetts the Sacco-Vanzetti case a.roused the indignation
of alJ fair-minded Americans. By the end of January nearly ten
thousand persons had been arrested for alleged radicalism, and
they were treated with extreme brutality. A revived Ku Klux
Klan tortured and murdered throughout the South and Mid-
west, with no interference by the police. During 1920 more than
sixty Negroes were lynched. Twenty striking miners, peacefully
and legally picketing on the public highway near Butte, Mon-
tana, were shot down by Anaconda Copper Company guards,
and two of them died.
A newspaper reporter who visited Atlanta Prison found Eu-
gene Debs furious about these events. The Socialist leader im-
mediately pointed out that force and violence were being em-
ployed by the ruling classes, not by the radicals. He thought
these instances in the United States were relevant to the
dictatorship in Russia. "All along the track of the ages," Debs
declared, "wherever a government has been overthrown by
force and violence, that government had been maintained by
force and violence."
Debs tried to orient himself in relation to the split in the
Socialist Party, but he was at a serious disadvantage. His poli-
cies had always grown out of detailed. knowledge of
the needs and thoughts of the American people. Perhaps more
than any other man, he had maintained intimate personal con-
tact with scores of thousands of workingmen and farmers. His
WORLD SOCIALISM
reactions were usually based on his sensitivity to popular moods
rather than on theoretical analysis. But this approach was now
denied him. His only information came from the newspapers and
the comparative handful of socialists who visited him in Atlanta
prison. He found it impossible, however, to ignore the divisions
in the radical movement. Writing to his brother Theodore, Debs
reflected on these divisions with deep sorrow: "It has been the
fate of our movement from the beginning, especially in this
country, to split. About the time we get in shape to do some-
thing we have to split up and waste our energy in factional
strife. We preach unity everlastingly, but we ourselves keep
splitting apart." At the same time Debs sent an appeal for unity
to the New York Call and other radical journals. "1 do not be-
lieve," he stated, "that there is any real difference among the
rank and file of socialists; the real contentions very likely lie in
the leadership of the different groups. The socialist movement
must rise to the occasion this year and unite the industrial and
political
Debs himself was chosen to lead this effort. For the first time
in American history, a man in prison was selected to run for
President. The Socialist national convention, which nominated
Debs for President in May of 1920, sent Seymour Stedman,
James Oneal, and Julius Gerber to notify Debs of the nomina-
tion. The committee met the Socialist leader in the office of
Warden Zerbst in Atlanta. Although Debs cheerfully agreed to
accept this new honor and responsibility, he freely criticized the
Socialist Party: The campaign platform, according to the candi.
date, "could have been made much more effective if it had
stressed the class struggle more prominently and if more em-
phasis had been placed on industrial organization. . . . There
is a tendency in the party to become a party of politicians in-
stead of a party of workers. That policy must be checked, not
encouraged. Weare in politics not to get votes, but to develop
the power to emancipate the working class."
Debs went on to decry the Socialist criticism of the Com-
munists. The two Communist parties had maintained their em-
phasis on industrial unionism and the class struggle, as Debs
requested, but they also tended to scorn parliamentary action
898
THE BENDING CROSS
and to overestimate the imminence of revolution in' the United
States. However, reflecting on the presence in the Communist
parties of such friends as Marguerite Prevey, Rose Pastor
Stokes, Charles E. Ruthenberg, Allred Wagenknecht, John
Reed, and Ella Reeve Bloor, Debs was confident that they
would correct their errors. So he told the Socialist committee:
"1 :was sorry to read a speech of Berger's theotherday attacking
the Communists. 1 have known many comrades in all these
parties. I have high regard for them. They are as honest as we
are."
On another point also. the Presidential nominee disagreed
with his party. The so-ealled "dictatorship of the proletariat"
inspired one of the main disputes between the Socialists and the
Communists. This theory, as it had been elaborated by Nikolai
Lenin. was in no way intended to imply a dictatorship by one
man or a small clique or a political party. But the success of
every revolution required the suppression of the previous rulers
-in the American Revolution the Tories, in the French and
English Revolutions the nobility. So Lenin concluded that it
was necessary to deny civil liberties to the capitalist class. of
Russia. This viewpoint was supported by Eugene Debs. who
again reproached his Socialist colleagues: "During the transition
period the revolution must protect itself ... I heartily sup-
port the Russian Revolution without reservation."
The Presidential campaign. unlike past years. brought no
great change to Debs' life. He had been asked by the Socialist
notification committee how he would conduct his campaign. "I
will be a candidate at home in seclusion." he laughingly replied.
"It will be much less tiresome and my managers and opponents
can always locate me." Although he began to write
articles for publication. the major part of his time was still
spent talking to the other prisoners or reading the books which
were sent to him. The Brass Check. Upton Sinclair's study of
the unseen censorship in America, was described by Debs as
''his bravest, and, in many respects, his best book." The same
author's Mammonart, a discussion of the effects of
upon American culture, received even higher praise from the
Socialist leader. '1t is a wonderful book," he wrote to Sinclair,
WORLD SOCIALISM 899
"and must be an eye-opening one to many of the artists, writers
and others who serve the leisure class in everything they do but
indignantly resent the idea that there is any propaganda in
their work. . . I would like an inscribed copy of 'Mammonart'
simply your name in it with your hand for my little collection
of the immortals."
One book which fell into Debs' hands, however, met with an
indignant repudiation. Reading the entire Bible for the first
time in his life, he was shocked by the "monstrous" God of re-
venge presented there. Debs' conception of ChristiruPty is re-
vealed in his description of an interview with a minister who
visited his ceIl in Atlanta prison. I told my friend of the cloth,"
he recalled, "that I did not believe Christ was meek and lowly,
but a real, living, vital agitator who went into the Temple with
a lash and a knout and whipped the oppressors of the poor,
routed them out of doors and spilled their blood-got silver on
the floor ... He denounced the profiteers, and it was for this
that they nailed his quivering body to the cross and spiked it to
the gates of Jerusalem, not because he told men to love one an-
other. That was a harmless doctrine. But when he touched
their profits and denounced them before their own people he
was marked for crucifixion."
The minister was glad to escape and never returned, but the
Catholic chaplain of the prison remained one of Debs' closest
friends. Throughout his imprisonment Debs kept a large por-
trait of Jesus of Nazareth on the wall of his room. His repudi-
ation of the Bible and the organized church in no way lessened
Debs' homage to the Prince of Peace, whom he had described
twenty years earlier as "the great Divine Tramp who never had
a dollar, but who understood and loved the common folk, the
ordinary ruck of men. with an absorbing and abiding affection."
This same absorbing affection for th e common folk was the
chief characteristic of Eugene Debs. Since it had always been
transmuted into active concern it had never found expression in
words. Here the confinement of prison wrought a change. Debs
was powerless to interfere in the struggles beyond the walls. He
began to brood and worry, until finally he became persuaded
that his was a melancholy nature. In writing to his brother
THE BENDING CROSS
Theodore of this mood. he again found a comparison with
Abraham Lincoln: ''I think Lincoln must have known some-
thing of this when he said that if there was anyone in purgatory
who suffered more than he did he pitied him. During these
periods of moral pregnancy and travail. for such they are, it
seems to me that my heart is the very heart and centre of all
the sadness and sorrow. all the pain and misery, and all the
suffering and agony in the world. I don't know why it is so. I
only know that deep melancholy is so completely a part of me.
and I have so often been under its chastening influence. that it
has become sacred to me, and costly as it is, I should not wish
it taken out of my l i f e . ~
This self-analysis by Debs was never revealed to the Social-
ists, who were exclusively concerned with the Presidential race.
Debs' nomination was a strong stimulus for the amnesty cam-
paign, which had begun even before he was confined. The argu-
ments for a general pardon for all political prisoners were rein-
forced on September 5. 1919. when President Wilson declared in
a speech: "Is there any man here or woman-let me say is there
any child-who does not know that the seed of war in the modem
world is industrial and commercial rivalry? This was &
commercial and industrial war." Soon alter that speech the
Chicago Federation of Labor. with two hundred fifty thousand
members, petitioned for immediate freedom for Eugene Debs.
The United Mine Workers of Indiana asked both the release of
Debs and the removal of Postmaster-General Albert S. Burle-
son, who was still zealously suppressing the radical newspapers.
"We try to be fair to both sides." observed one miner. "Debs
and Burleson should both be let out."
An amnesty committee of trade-union officials visited De bs on
April 15. 1920, and Warden Zerbst permitted his famous pris-
oner to leave the prison in their custody. Riding f-or several
hours through the city and suburbs of Atlanta, Debs suddenly
became conscious of the oppressive influence of walls and ba.rs.
''How good it is," he exclaimed, "to see the sky in all its bigness
and splendor." But this brief taste of freedom did not stimulate
any overwhelming desires for a pardon. When Clarence Darrow,
who ha.d become a leader of the amnesty campaign, visited Debs
WORLD SOCIALISM
later that summer, the Socialist leader declined to ask any favors
of the Administration in Washington. Darrow recorded that he,
Debs, and Warden Zerbst had spent the entire morning in the
warden's office, discussing "all sorts of subjects, from Socialism
and Anarchism to prisons and punishments, and every other
social question." No train was leaving for Washington until late
that night, so Darrow asked permission to spend the afternoon
with Debs in his cell. The warden readily granted the request,
and then decided to ,accompany Darrow. The six cell mates,
Darrow, and Zerbst sat around on boxes, the few chairs, and the
bunks, chatting about their "experiences, hopes and visions,"
Darrow said. A beautiful flower ga.rden was just outside the
cell. "Really," Debs commented, "this place is not so bad. I
look a t that garden of flowers. There are bars in front, I know-
but I never see the bars." During his brief visit, Darrow re-
marked the extent to which Debs was "loved and idealized by
all the inmates."
The Federal authorities granted Eugene Debs permission to
issue one bulletin a week to the United Press for the final months
of the campaign. Neither the Republican nominee, Senator
Warren G. Ha.rding, nor the Democratic candidate, James M.
Cox, received much attention from Debs, who directed a series
of broadsides against the incumbent President. The Socialist
leader entertained a bitter hatred of Woodrow Wilson. In view
of the President's admission that the World War had been a
"commercial and industrial war," Debs failed to see how he
could honestly deny pardons to the men who had been jailed for
saying the same thing. Wilson had spoken fine phrases about the
need "to make the world safe for democracy," Debs declared,
and he was now using the same propaganda about the League of
Nations, which Debs called the "new capitalist international."
Debs also held the President responsible for the American in-
vasion of Russia. In a conversation with another prisoner, he
stated that all the foreign armies in Russia should be"cleaned
out like mice." This condemnation of Wilson was only exceeded
by Debs' scorn for the White Russian General Kolchak."Every
country has its traitors," Debs said of Kolchak. "We had our
Benedict Arnold." And in the same conversation, he denounced
THE BENDING CROSS
Woodrow Wilson as "pro-British and a tool of Wall Street.
a college professor who isn't fit to be President because he
doesn't know the lives of the people."
. During an interview with Charles Wood of the New York
W07'ld, Debs repeated that he was "heart and soul with the
Russian Revolution," although the violence in Russia made his
"heart ache to think of it." He also gave a clear statement of his
general attitude toward revolutionary violence:
As a student of history, I know that these great move-
ments for human emancipation do not come without bloodshed;
and although I would not kill a man in self-defense, I am in
favor of shedding as much blood as is absolutely necessary in
order to emancipate the people. But not one drop more. More-
over, if bloodshed is necessary, I shall not follow the course of
some of America's superpatriots, who insisted on others going
into battle while they stayed home and piled up profits.
The excitement of the campaign proved to be good for Debs'
health. When the Socialist campaign committee visited him in
October; they found him lean, tanned, clad in blue denims and
canvas sneakers. He was eager to get out of prison and take an
active part in the election fight. He had also decided that, when
he was released, he would make a mammoth organizing tour to
build up the socialist movement.
In fact, Debs could doubtleSs have organized several Socialist
locals within the prison itself. The Federal prison at Leaven-
worth, Kansas, where most of the political prisoners were in-
carcerated, boasted a newspaper named The Can-Optmer and
weekly study classes in Marxism, but Debs lacked the tempera-
ment to defy the prison authorities. His influence was expressed
in his social case work. From the very beginning, he had con-
sciously sought out the worst prisoners. Many of them became
model inmates due to his application of the philosophy of Lea
M iseruhle8.
Warden Zerbst, realizing Debs' immense popularity, was al-
ways careful not to interfere with his activities. A colorful anec-
dote, of uncertain validity, illustrates the warden's attitude
toward his famous prisoner. The story describes Debs strolling
about in the prison y8,l'd, hunched forward, his elbows sticking
WORLD SOCIALISM 405
out behind his back. A hand waved to him from the solitary
confinement block, and ne immediately waved back. Since the
rules forbade any communication with the so-called dungeons, a
guard promptly put Debs in the cell next to the man who had
waved to him. News of this action threw Warden Zerbst into a
panic: "My God, take him out, take him out. Don't you know
that if the men heard that Debs was in the hole they would tear
down the walls of this prison, brick by brick, to get him out?"
His dynamic charm was only one reason for the popularity
which Debs enjoyed among his fellow inmates. Many of them
firmly believed that he would be elected President, and then he
could pardon all of them. He was often asked if he intended to
pardon himself. The prison grapevine stoutly contended that
Number 9658 would be the next Chief Executive, and that
neither Harding nor Cox would receive a single electoral vote
from Atlanta prison.
In the final stages of the campaign, Debs was forced to repu-
diate statements by both his enemies and his friends. Upton
Sinclair wrote to inquire about press reports that Debs had
tried deliberately to obstruct the draft act. Replying through
his brother Theodore, Debs wrote: ''Tell him (Comrade Sin-
clair) that the statement in the Christian Science Monitor edi-
torial that I had declared my determination to obstruct the
draft is an absolute falsehood. I never mentioned the draft in
my speech, nor made any reference to it."
The Socialist newspapers, in order to counteract some of the
adverse -publicity, began referring to their candidate as "the
grand old man." This appellation proved very annoying to its
subject. "I am anything but 'a grand old man,''' he snorted in
a public statement. "A grand man is not old and an old man
is not grand. I am not an old man and do not intend to be. I
have no' time to get old. The spirit within me and the soul of
me, the spirit and soul of socialism, are a sure guarantee against
'old age.' I need not seek the gurgling spring of eternal youth.
I have found it."
The day of the election arrived, and the votes were counted,
and the Socialist hopes were destroyed. Although the adoption
of the Woman Suffrage Amendment had vastly increased the
electorate, Debs' total vote barely exceeded that of 1 9 1 ~ He
had been campaigning for tlW amendmerit for more than forty
years. Now it had been adopted, but he had derived scant im-
mediate benefit. The vote for Eugene Debs was particularly
disappointing since it did not represent votes for socialism.
Thousands upon thousands had cast their votes for the prisoner
in order to protest the infringements of civil liberties. The elec-
tion finally established what everybody had known: the Social-
ist Party had almost disappeared as an organized movement.
The size of the Socialist vote was not, however, wholly dis-
couraging. It demonstrated that many citizens had rejected the
newspaper headlines about The Red Menace. The antiradical
hysteria of 1920 had exceeded the repression of the war period.
The year had begun with the Palmer Raids, which flared up
periodically throughout the campaign. Both major parties had
joined the attacks on all radicals. Five legally elected Socialists
had been denied their seats in the legislature of New York. The
Communists had been confused and disorganized by their prac-
tical illegality. But still an inmate of Atlanta Prison had polled
nearly a million votes.
Debs' comment on the results had been published even before
the votes were cast. In his "Last Call to the Voters in 1920,"
he had written: "There is one thing I know on the eve of this
election. I shall not be disappointed. The result will be as it
should be. The people will vote for what they think they want,
to the extent that they think at all, and they, too, will not be
disappointed."
"In my maturer years I no longer permit myself to be either
disappointed or discouraged. I hope for everything and expect
nothing. The people can have anything they want. The trouble
is they do not want anything. At least they vote that way on
election day."
[ 3 ]
ALTHOUGH Theodore Debs' hopes for a prompt pardon for his
brother were crushed by the election results, many Socialists
took the 'Opposite view. The overwhelming vote for the Republi-
WORLD SOCIALISM-
cans seemed to express disapproval of the policies of WoOOrow
Wilson, including his attitude toward political prisoners. A new
surge of optimism swept the amnesty campaign two weeks
after the election, when the President pardoned a German spy.
This spy had been convicted in February, 1918, of conspiracy
to sabotage the food and munitions ships of the AUies. Surely,
thought the Socialists, their leader had not committed a crime
that compared with this.
On January 81, 1921, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
recommended to the President that ~ b s sentence be commuted
to expire on Lincoln's birthday, February 12, 1921. The rec-
ommendation pointed out that Debs was in poor health, sixty-
five years old" and that his friends feared he might die in prison.
Unless executive action were taken he would not be eligible for
parole until August 11, 1921. Completion of his sentence, allow-
ing time for good behavior, would not come until December 28,
1925.
Woodrow Wilson, when he received the recommendation,
wrote across it the single word: "Denied."
The reasons for Wilson's action were later explained by his
private secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, who was with the Presi-
dent when the recommendation arrived from the Attorney-
GeneraJ. The President, after carefully reading the recommen-
dation, burst out: "I will never consent to the pardon of this
man. While the Hower of American youth was pouring out its
blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs,
stood behind the lines, sniping, attacking, and denouncing them.
Before the war he had a perfect right to exercise his freedom of
speech and to express his own opinion, but once the Congress of
the United States declared war, silence on his part would have
been the proper course to pursue. I know there will be a great
deal of denunciation of me for refusing this pardon. They will
say I am cold-blooded and indifferent, but it will make no im-
pression on me. This man was a traitor to his country and he
will never be pardoned during my administration."
On February 1, 1921, the day the President's action was made
public, Debs discussed the matter with a visitor. The Socialist
leader was particularly indignant because it looked as if he had
THE BENDING CROSS
applied for a pardon. This course he had consistently rejected as
a tacit admission of guilt. Debs' wrath became so intense that
he gave his visitor a public statement, which appeared in the
New York Times the following day:
I understand perfectly the feelings of Wilson. When he re-
views what he has done,. when he realizes the suffering he has
brought about, then he is being punished. It is he, not I, who
needs a pardon. If I had it in my power I would give him the
pardon which would set him free.
Woodrow Wilson is an exile from the hearts of his people. The
betrayal of his ideals makes him the most pathetic figure in the
world. No man in public life in American history ever retired so
thoroughly discredited, so scathingly rebuked, so overwhelm-
ingly impeached and repudiated as Woodrow Wilson. . . .
The appearance of this statement caused the Department of
Justice to withdraw all of Debs' visiting and writing privileges,
and he was plAced incommunicado for an indefinite period. But
the damage had been done. The government's reprisal was in-
terpreted as an act of personal spite, and the protest was enor-
mous. The day before Wilson's retirement the order was partially
revoked.
Mter that the amnesty movement grew daily, but it received
1ittle help from the radical parties. The Communists, now united
into one illegal party, were so preoccupied with internal prob-
lems that they gave little aid to the political prisoners. Also they
had reached an impasse in their negotiations with Eugene Debs.
The previous summer a Communist committee had visited Debs
in Atlanta and offered their support to his Presidential cam-
paign if he would repudiate such right-wing leaders as Morris
Hillquit and Victor Berger. Although Debs disagreed with
Berger and HiIlquit about the Russian Revolution and indus-
trial unionism, he regarded th; Communist ultimatum as an
attempt to dictate his beliefs and he repudiated it with char-
acteristically strong language. There the matter rested, and
neither Debs nor the Communists made the first-move toward
a reconciliation.
Nor was the Socialist Party of much practical help. On Jan-
uary 17, 1921, Otto Branstetter, now National Secretary, had
WORLD SOCIALISM 407
written derisively to Debs about "the handful of disgruntled
comrades who have left the Party." But his admission to Debs
on April 4, 1921, came much closer to the truth:
The Party is in a weaker and more disorganized condition
than at any time in its history. We are entirely without courage
or self-reliance. We are doubtful of ourselves and our own
ability. We are seeking help and assistance from every possible
source and are depending entirely on other people and other
organizations to do the work which we ought to be doing our-
selves ....
New factors, however, were operating in favor of Debs' re-
lease. Doubtless the most important was the fact that the White
House had evicted a Puritan moralist and replaced him with an
easy-living Midwestern politician. Warren G. Harding, what-
ever his faults, was more receptive to the amnesty committees
than Woodrow Wilson had ever been. During the 1920 campaign
the Farmer-Labor nominee for President, Parley P. Christenson,
had asked the other candidates to join him in petitioning for the
release of Debs. They refused to join such a petition at that
time, but Harding wired to Christenson that he favored a gen-
eral amnesty for political prisoners. Scores of prominent citizens
and large sections of the labor movement now insisted that
Harding make good on this promise.
Accordingly, one of the first acts of the new Chief Executive
was to instruct Attorney-General Harry M. Daugherty to re-
view the Debs' case. On March 24, 1921, Eugene Debs, alone
and unguarded, took the train to Washington for a three-hour
interview with the Attorney-General. Neither Debs nor Daugh-
erty would comment on the interview at that time, but the
Attorney-General later told Clarence Darrow about the affair:
"He spent a large part of the day in my office, and I never met a
man I liked better."
Debs made a notable impression on everyone he met in
Washington. The most notorious member of the Harding ad-
ministration was Jesse Smith, who held no public office but was
the actual director of the graft, corruption, and bribery by which
America signaled the return to normalcy. Any favor at all-a
seat on the Federal bench, a pardon for a public enemy, ambas-
sadorships and contracts-could be obtained from Jesse Smith,
and the prices were always reasonable. This same Jesse Smith
met Eugene Debs at the station in Washington, escorted him to
Daugherty's office, and returned him to the b"ain. Smith too
was a victim of Debs' charm. On the return trip to the station
he asked Debs if he could be of any assistance. The Socialist
leader opined that he had always been very fond of quill tooth-
picks, but he hadn't seen a single one since he went to Atlanta.
Smith ordered the driver to stop the car, ran into a store, and
returned with a huge bundle of quill toothpicks.
After Debs' trip to Washington, the amnesty campaign really
went into high gear. The Socialist Party, with its weakened or-
ganization of about five thousand members, secured three
hundred thousand signatures on an amnesty petition, as well as
the endorsement of seven hundred organizations with a com-
bined membership of more than three million. A petition in Terre
Haute alone received twenty-one thousand signatures. The
growing disillusionment about the war, the League of Nations,-
and the Treaty of Versailles, also worked to Debs' advantage.
Even Clyde R. Miller, the reporler for the Cleveland Plain-
Dealer whose testimony had helped to convict the Socialist
leader, had begun to doubt his earlier actions and made a per-
sonal appeal to Harding, then still a Senator. Upton Sinclair,
Clarence Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, and other early participants
in the amnesty movement now redoubled their efforts.
Harding had told Miller that, if he were elected President, he
might pardon Debs by July Fourth. Steps were actually made
toward this end, but they were dropped due to the opposition
of the American Legion and other groups. The matter dragged
on into the summer, and the Socialist hopes began to drop. Late
in August the White House announced that no decision would
be made in the Debs' case until the Senate had ratified a peace
treaty with Germany.
But the stream of visitors to the prison all brought encour-
aging news. Norman Hapgood, former ambassador to Denmark,
told Debs that the President would soon act favorably on his
case. Even Samuel Gompers, in Atlanta for the AFL national
convention, called to see Debs. The meeting of these two men
WORLD SOCIALISM
409
set up a flickering spectrum of memories and reversals. Thirty.
five years earlier Gompers had been the more radical of the two
young trade unionists. But he had grown steadily more con-
servative while Debs moved the other way. Their paths split
sharply after the Pullman boycott. The Socialist leader had
found his place with the unskilled workingmen, the unorganized
farmers, the disinherited convicts, at the bottom of the social
heap. Gompers had consciously chosen to speak for the skilled
craft unionists. No'w theymet again: the squat and well-tailored
confidant of industrialists and statesmen; the gaunt intimate of
criminals, wearing his shabby prison stripes.
Debs broke the silence with a curt greeting; "How do you do.
Mr. Gompers."
"How do you do, Gene," Gompers replied. Then, stung by
the formality of Debs' words, he hurried on: "Many years ago
you called me Sam. Can't we get back on those terms again?')
Frigid and unforgiving, the prisoner replied: "Perhaps some
day we can." The two men spoke of generalities for a few min-
utes; then Debs returned to his duties in the hospital.
Some of Debs' contacts with the outside world must have
heen even more painful than his brief conversation with Samuel
Gompers. On May 5, 1921, he received a letter from Portland,
Oregon, crudely written in pencil on the back of an envelope.
The letter, for some unknown reason, had been passed on to him
by the prison censor. "Dear Gene," it began. "We working
people of Oregon hope that the guards throw the whips into
you every day. You aren't a toiler. You never produced any-
thing. You tried to prolong the war so that 1000000's of the US
boys would be slaughtered. We hope you'll never come out of
the jug alive. You are a parasyte We hope the guards will lash
you on the bareback." The letter was signed "A. Producer."
Fifteen years later this document was still preserved among the
papers of Kate Debs.
[ 4 1
IN 1916 the gossip in Terre Haute lingered over the failure of
Kate Debs to attend her husband's speeches. Two years later it
pointed out that she had not attended his trial. But the most
severe criticism centered on her failure to visit him a single time
during his entire term in Moundsville and Atlanta prisons. Cer-
tainly this -seeming neglect is hard to understand, and even
harder to justify. Although the chivalrous nature of Eugene
Debs may have protested against the thought of any woman
visiting a prison, his guests in Atlanta included Kate Richards
O'Hare, Dr. Madge Patton Stephens, and Marguerite Prevey.
Mrs. Mabel D. Curry, the Socialist wife of a professor in Terre
Haute, worked side by side with Theodore Debs during the
entire period when Eugene was in prison, but Kate Debs never
appeared in her husband's office.
Difficult to explain as these facts are, they are only part of the
story. Kate Debs never tried to escape from responsibility for
her husband's actions, and she gave both sympathy and support
to other victims of the an ti-Socialistfeeling. Rer brother, Arthur
Baur, supplied bail money for dozens of victims of the Palmer
Raids. And the depth of Kate's attachment to her husband is
apparent in the message which she wrote on her Christmas card
in 1919:
To that Old Sweetheart of Mine
Greetings and good wishes
I think of you lovingly and devotedly each passing hour of
the day; at n i ~ t I lay my hand reverently on your dear
pillow and say 'good night" and in the morning I step in and
say "good morning dear" and kiss your/illow. Love, Love,
how wunder;ful it is! And mine is true an enduring through
all time.
Your devoted wife
K.
Several explanations for Kate Debs' failure to visit Atlanta,
and a wholly charming facet to her personality, appear in her
correspondence with Kate O'Hare late in 1921. The prison term
of Mrs. O'Hare had ended with a Presidential pardon in 1920;
and in October of that year she and her husband, Frank O'Hare,
had revived the National Rip-Saw. A year later they proposed
to do an article about Kate Debs. The subject evinced every
WORLD SOCIALISM
411
desire to co-operate, but she was more concerned that proper
credit should be given to her brother Arthur, "who has been
such a comfort to me and who went clear to the prison doors with
Gene." In order to prove that Arthur Baur was a wonderful
person, Kate Debs pointed out that her husband thought so.
Kate Debs was also puzzled about the attention that was
being directed toward her. I have often wondered," she wrote
to Mrs. O'Hare, "what you could write that would he interest-
ing. just about 'me.' The wives of great men always suffer by
comparison, and people expect them to be as great as their hus-
bands, when they know, that as a rule, great men marry in-
ferior women."
When the article appeared in the Rip-Saw, it included an ap-
peal for funds for Kate Debs. This was a perfectly natural course
for Kate and Frank O'Hare to follow, since they regarded the
gifts as a "love token" for Eugene Debs and his wife. But Kate
Debs' self-relumce rebelled at the idea of charity. She forced the
return of every dollar which was collected in her behalf. "My
wants are few:' she wrote to Mrs. O'Hare, "and are amply
provided for without such ,an effort on the part of the comrades."
The original plan had been for Kate Debs to autograph receipts
which would be sent to all of the donors, and she enumerated
the reasons which made this impossible: "In the first place, I
am not well and it would simply be a physical impossibility;
there are home duties, the care of mother, and the daily demands
to meet and under these conditions you can readily understand
that my hands are already full to overflowing." These same
reasons partially explain Kate Debs' neglect of her husband:
her own ill health, the care of her aged mother, who had lived
with her for mapy years, and the care of her home in Terre
Haute.
The editors of the Rip-Saw, however, were not to be so easily
dissuaded. Kate and Frank O'Hare made separate visits to
Terre Haute in order to plead with Kate Debs. They were com-
pletely unsuccessful; she insisted that the money be returned to
the donors. Finally, in complete despair, they suggested that
they buy her an electric car. Her reply came on December 7.
~ ; "This morning I had Gene's usual weekly letter ... In
41!l THE BENDING CROSS
commenting on the edition he says, 'Kate O'Hare wrote beauti-
fully and brilliantly. She made a great story .... you and I
in particular may well be proud and grateful for it. . . But
you must not let them get an electric car.'''
"So hear what the Great Mogul says," continued Kate Debs
irreverently, "and don't dare send me a car. I never took that
seriously, I thought you said it jokingly. But I could not accept
a car. Trust you and the children and your dear mate are all
well."
[ 5 ]
.AFTER the Senate ratified the peace treaty with Germany it be-
came obvious that the amnesty campaign was nearing a suc-
cessful close. President Harding signed the official proclamation
of peace on November 14,1921. The following day a large group
of ex-servicemen staged an amnesty demonstration at the World
Disarmament Conference in Washington. Each day seemed to
bring the pardon closer. When Kate Debs wrote to Kate O'Hare
on December 7, she was elated over a visit from Otto Bran-
stetter, the National Secretary of the Socialist Party, who had
just visited Washington. "His reports were all very favorable,"
wrote Kate Debs, "and I was so pleased to have them."
A leading r6le in the final negotiations was played by Lincoln
Steffens, who had idolized Eugene Debs since the 1908 interView
in Milwaukee. The journalist had consistently urged the Presi-
dent to wipe out the atmosphere of hatred and repression by
issuing a general pardon to all political prisoners. The Adminis-
tration, on the other hand, wanted to release a few prisoners at
a time. Attorney-General Daugherty even drafted a statement
that Debs was to sign before his release, in which he would
promise to abstain from attacks on the government. Steffens
persuaded Harding to throw the pledge in the wastebasket.
Steffens then went on to Atlanta to talk with Debs. He had
just returned from a trip to Russia with an official mission, and
he wished to present his observations to the Socialist leader.
Debs too was eager to talk about Russia. He was greatly dis-
turbed by the stories which had reached him about Bolshevik
WORLD SOCIALISM 418
activities-the violence, the denials of free speech, the civil war
and the executions. Debs contended that it was not a socialist
revolution, and then he vividly repeated the stories which the
Socialist leaders had told him. Having heard him out, the
journalist quietly observed: "True, 'Gene. That's all true that
you say. A revolution is no gentleman."
Debs jumped to his feet and exclaimed, "Of course, I forgot."
As a token of his good faith, he swore that he would never again
repeat any accusation against the Russian Bolsheviks until he
had discussed it with Steffens. .
This account of the visit, recalled by Steffens for his Auto-
biography, is supplemented by a letter from the journalist to his
sister, December 16, 1921:
The interview with Debs was good. The Warden left me two
hours alone with him, and I spent it trying to get Debs to
understand (and not to judge) Russia. He saw it all He said so;
he showed it in his questions; and he was delighted. He agreed
that the thing for him to do was to go out with or after me to
plead for bread for Russia-to be sent to the Soviet Government
direct. He hadn't been clear on the dictatorship, minority rule.
the red terror, etc. I just told him the story, showing how some
things happen that we don't expect.
He's a Man-
Finally Warren G. Harding decided that public oplIDon
would react favorably toward some affirmative action. On De-
cember 23, 1921, the White House announced that Eugene Debs
and twenty-three other political prisoners would be released on
Christmas Day. For Debs this was only a partial victory. He
had kept his resolve never to ask for a pardon. On the other
hand, no general amnesty had been granted. Even the favored
men were not fully pardoned and their civil rights were not re-
stored: their sentences were simply commuted to the time al-
ready served. But Debs decided that he could do more for the
amnesty campaign as a free man than as a prisoner, so he ac-
cepted the commutation.
The news of his impending release did not reach Debs until
the day before Christmas. He was immeasurably saddened by
the realization that he was deserting the other inmates of the
414
THE BENDING CROSS
prison. "These men need me," he said to a friend, "they trust
me and depend on me, and I hate to leave them." But he was
also cheered by the thought of rejoining his wife. "My darling
Kate," said his telegram on Christmas Day, "Greetings of love
to you and Dear sweet Mother. The day has come and our
blessed communion is near. A necessary trip to Washington and
then home to you, my beloved. With an overflowing heart I
embrace you and God bless you."
When the nation's foremost political prisoner became a free
man that afternoon, the warden suspended all rules, and twenty-
three hundred convicts crowded against the front wall of the
huge. prison building. Each chest became a sounding board. The
ivied walls trembled with the vibrations from a shouted farewell
Eugene Debs turned and paused for a moment, facing his
friends, tears streaming down his cheeks, his hat held immobile
high above his head.
CHAPTER XXI
[ 1 ]
E
UGENE DEBS had hoped to return from Atlanta di-
rectly to Terre. Haute, but the Presi?ent of the United
States asked hIm to call at the WhIte House. Refusal
was a patent impossibility. Debs caught the train to Washing-
ton. When he stepped into the President's office on the morning
of December 26, a free man, he murmured simply, "Good morn-
ing, Mr. President." Warren G. Harding, jovial, handsome,
friendly, bounded out of his chair and walked toward the
vict. "Well," said the President, "I have heard so damned much
about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now very glad to meet you
personally. "
Scores of reporters waylaid Debs when he emerged from his
interview with the Chief Executive. They asked him how he
liked the White House and the President. "Mr. Harding appears
to me," said the gaunt Socialist leader, "to be a kind gentleman,
one whom I believe possesses humane impulses. We understand
each other perfectly. As for the White House-well, gentlemen,
my personal preference is to live privately as an humble citizen
in my cottage at Terre Haute."
One of the reporters abruptly pointed out that Debs could not
live as a citizen in Terre Haute or anywhere else, because his
commutation of sentence had not restored his civil rights. "That
is a matter of no import to me," Debs stated curtly. "The
sovereignty of my citizenship resulted in my imprisonment.
The government has made me a citizen of the world."
Debs spent the entire day in Washington, receiving a number
of distinguished callers. One of them was the mysterious Urbain
Ledoux, who had achieved fame by his sensational efforts in
behalf of the unemployed of New York and Boston. Ledoux, a
modern Diogenes, had haunted the Government offices and the
415
tI6
THE BENDING CROSS
Washington Disarmament Conference, carrying a lamp in his
search for an honest man. He left the lamp with Debs.
Samuel Gompers and Frank Morrison of the AFL also
brought their congratulations to Debs. A few months later,
Gompers recorded this meeting in his autobiography. "After
peace was declared, I assisted a movement to release him [Debs]
and did everything within my power to accomplish that pur-
pose. . . . I saw him again when he came to Washington after
his release from Atlanta. He was gentle and genial and seemed
greatly touched at what I had done for him. He allowed the
message to be brought to me that he had completely changed
his point of view. However, it was only a short time before he
avowed anew his pre-War and during-the-War attitude. To
have done otherwise would have been to invite oblivion."
Like other parts of Gompers' memoirs, this commentary is
misleading. The AFL chieftain was notably a latecomer to the
amnesty campaign, running several paces behind Warren G.
Harding and even more behind important parts of the labor
movement. Both during and after his prison term Debs was un-
relenting in his dislike of Gompers, and there is no reason to be-
lieve that he had "completely changed his point of view," as
Gompers claimed. According to Lincoln Steffens, Debs had
agreed to devote his energies to appeals for Russian relief rather
than acrid attacks on the government, but this is far different
from Gompers' contention. Lastly, it was far afield to call Debs
a publicity seeker. In the golden age of the American salesman
he had the needed qualities to be one of the greatest salesmen
of them all. He could have been a leading figure in the Demo-
cratic Party if fame had been his chief concern. Probably he
could have made a fortune in business had his inclinations been
in that direction. He enjoyed public acclaim as much as other
men, perhaps more than most, but to say that is not to explain
his motives.
On December 27, Debs wired to his wife that he would leave
Washington at 6:20 P.M. and arrive in Terre Haute at 3:40 P.M.
the following day. This news threw the reception committee
into a panic. Debs' injunction delivered to Jam,es H. Maurer the
previous August, against any demonstrations at the time of his
WORLD SOCIALISM 417
release. had been largely unheeded. The very suddenness of the
event had precluded any meeting at Atlanta, but this oversight
was being corrected at Terre Haute, where a local committee
had been planning for weeks toward this day. Kate and Frank
O'Hare had arrived from St. Louis to make their contribution
to the welcome of Eugene Debs. Charles W. Ervin, the editor
of the New York Call, was reporting the occasion and also help-
ing to organize it. Thus three different groups, each largely n ~
beknownst to the others, were arranging a reception for Debs
in his home town.
Originally Debs was expected to arrive on Christmas Day,
and the local committee waited at Phil Reinbold's home until
late in the afternoon for advance notice of his approach. Finally
Otto Branstetter, with the Socialist leader in Washington, sent
word that they would not arrive until December 28. The ex-
citement had to be kept at a fever pitch for two extra days, a
task that was difficult if not impossible. But Kate O'Hare and
Ervin spoke at a mass meeting on the evening of Monday,
December 26, and fUl"llished front-page copy for the local press.
The next day Ervin took the visiting newspapermen on a tour
of the town, where they interviewed countless citizens about
Debs' anticipated return. That kept the event alive for the
second day. Debs himself would take care of the third day.
Meanwhile the three groups had continued with their r ~
rangements for a reception on the evening of December 28. Phil
Reinbold and WiJl Schuhardt of Terre Haute called on the
stationmaster to discuss Debs' arrival. When they said that they
expected at least twenty thousand people at the station, the
official hooted derisively. They also asked permission to run a
truck up to the door of his coach so that he would not have to
fight his way through the crowd; the stationmaster denied the
request because he feared that the crowd and the truck might
break through the wooden platform under the train sheds.
Neither Charles Ervin nor the O'Hares had been idle. Frarik
O'Hare, with a keen eye for audience participation, ordered from
a printer fifty thousand small cards on which red letters bore the
legend: "Welcome Home---Gene Debs." He then combed the
local shops for every inch of red ribb;m, so that the cards could
be fastened to hats, to wrists, to coat lapels. Dissatisfied with the
quantity of ribbon available in Terre Haute, he sent to Indi-
anapolis for more.
Charles Ervin led a delegation to see the mayor, who agreed
that all fire bells should ring to greet Debs' arrival. He also
chanced to speak with an old resident who remembered that
Debs had ridden on a large wagon, drawn by dozens of his
neighbors, from the station to his home on his return from
Woodstock in 1895. Ervin. quick to detect the angle involved,
led a fevered search for the identical carriage. It was finally
found in the livery stable yard of an undertaker, and it was
drawn up on Ninth Street near the station.
The scene had been carefully set. For nearly a week the local
newspapers had been filled with news of Debs' release. The Terre
Haute Tribune, so recently in hot pursuit of the disloyal ele-
ments, reflected the change of public opinion in its unctuous
declaration: "Terre Haute citizens count Debs as an esteemed
friend, no matter how reservedly they view his economic the-
ories." Way out in Kansas, William Allen White wrote in the
Emporia Gazette: "Pardons, like kissing, go by favors. Debs was
pardoned for the same reason he was jailed: Because he was a
man of charm and eloquence whom it was dangerous to have
out fighting the war when we were in war, and also whom it is
dangerous to have in jail now when we are at peace."
This broadside of publicity ensured a gigantic demonstration
for the evening of December 28. Workingmen from all over
Indiana would congregate in Terre Haute. A stonemason from
Dayton, Ohio, had already been waiting three days on the back
steps of Debs' house. Bu t the telegram from Debs, announcing
that he would arrive at S:4O in the afternoon, threatened to
disrupt the entire plan. The postwar recession was in full swing,
and it was manifestly tmfair to ask the coal miners and factory
workers to leave their jobs in order to attend the meeting.
Charles Ervin immediately wired that Debs would have to stop
over in Indianapolis for four hours in order to arrive in Terre
Haute at 8 P.M. Phil Reinbold met Debs in Indianapolis to en-
sure that there would be no mistake. So Eugene Debs, who
had not seen his wife in nearly three years, was allowed to set
WORLD SOCIALISM
419
one foot on the front porch, then was ordered to pause and wait
for four hours.
Excitement gripped the entire city when the expected train
pulled into the station. Fire bells and chimes pealed. Dozens of
torches swung through the cold darkness. More than twenty-
five thousand people shouted and screamed up and down on the
platform under the train sheds. Eugene Debs was roughly seiZed
by adoring hands, hoisted far above the crowd, and carried to
the wagon waiting on Ninth Street. Dozens of eager men seized
the ropes to drag the wagon through the streets to his home. As
the hysterical throng moved toward its destination, a Negro
band played "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
[ 2 ]
EUGENE DEBs-had he come home only to die? His health had
broken completely. Prison food had completely wrecked his
stomach and his kidneys. The recurrent headaches were malev-
olent torture. Rheumatism and lumbago twisted and perplexed
his muscles. He found it impossible to rest, and rest he desper':'
ately needed. Every night he lay taut and sensitized, waiting
for the sleep that never came. His heart jerked so gaspingly that
noise from the rattling bed struck the walls of the room.
The previous August Debs had told a leadingSocialist that he
did not want to be bothered for at least a month after his re-
lease. This request was never observed. Political warfare be-
tween the Socialists and Communists had become ever more
bitter, and each side now attempted to enlist the convictions
and services of Eugene Debs. In the resulting struggle, however.
the Socialists showed by far the greater persistence. The Com-
munists sent an occasional emissary to Terre Haute; the So-
cialists maintained an unbroken stream of visitors, letters,
telegrams, requests. _
Even if Debs had been completely well, the choice before him
would have been fraught with difficulties. He had serious dis-
agreements with both of the contending factions. The Socialists,
for their part, were furiously attacking the Russian Bolsheviks,
the American Communists, and- the Third Communist Inter-
THE BENDING CROSS
national. They had in effect abandoned the campaign for in-
dustrial unionism in favor of a working agreement with the
Gompers grouping in the AFL. Their political program had been
reduced to the effort to stimulate a broad reform party, based
on the craft unions, in which they could .recoup their waning
fortunes. The theory of the class struggle had disappeared from
the Socialist philosophy, and the Party was following the same
program of right-wing opportunism which Debs had so heartily
condemned in the past.
The Communists had drifted to the other extreme. Their
practical illegality had stimulated in some members a glorifica-
tion of underground activity, a juvenile posturing in place of
decisive action. Their sectarian tendencies, reminiscent in some
ways of Daniel DeLeon, had alienated large groups of revolu-
tionary workers. Several of Debs' close friends, among them
Marguerite Prevey, had left the Communist Party because of
these errors. Finally, Eugene Debs had been personally affected
by the Communist failures. Their abandonment of the campaign
for amnesty had doubtless lengthened his prison term. Their re-
jection of his candidacy in 1920 had the same ultimate effect.
Many Communists, angered by his refusal to break with Hill-
quit and Berger, had already denounced him as a traitor to the
workers.
Finding himself unable to make a decision easily. Debs re-
fused to decide at all He maintained his membership and paid
his dues in the Socialist Party. More than that he would not do.
He refused to appear at meetings, to accept speaking engage-
ments, or to issue a public avowal of his loyalty. In December,
1921, when the Communists formed a legal organization called
the Workers Party, Debs had asked Theodore to send "his
cordial greetings and best wishes" to their convention. The
following April he conveyed his "cordial greetings" to the So-
cialistconvention, and added "that the state of my health alone
prevents my being in attendance." So the issue was held in
abeyance, with both parties frustrated but hopeful.
A continuous stream of visitors appeared at the door of 451
North Eighth Street. Many persons sternly refused to be turned
away. One woman knocked at the door repeatedly. even after
WORLD SOCIALISM 421
Kate Debs had stated that her husband was too tired and ill to
see anybody. The woman spent the entire night on the front
porch in quest of an interview. Recalling the incident later,
Debs said that, he became "so hopping mad that I told her
under my breath to go to hell."
This nagging, relentless attention, although motivated by
sympathy and devotion to the Socialist leader, actually became
a severe drain on his strength. The telephone rang twenty-four
hours a day. Each mail delivery brought a huge mound of
letters asking for articles on every subject, endorsements for
organizations and products, and even four offers to appear in
vaudeville. A man who had built a large amphitheatre in Toledo
offered Debs two thousand dollars to walk across the stage on
opening night.
Kate Debs revived several harsh measures to meet this threat.
All callers were curtly told that Debs was not receiving any
body. This rejection was meted out one morning to Powers
Hapgood, a young, rugged Harvard graduate who chose to make
his living as. a coal miner. Hapgood turned away and strolled
up the street. Suddenly he met a man whom he recognized as
Eugene Debs. He hailed the Socialist leader, who seemed to be
healthy enough. Debs tarried for a fifteen-minute chat about
socialism and the United Mine Workers and conditions in the
coal industry.
Hapgood was not the only caller, nor was he the first, to com
plain that Kate Debs was a gruff and frigid doorkeeper. The
same charge had been made as far back as 1897 by James Oneal.
a Terre Haute steelworker who became a Socialist leader. The
popular interpretation was simply that Kate Debs did not like
her husband's working-class and Socialist friends. But dozens of
these same friends remember the extreme cordiality with which
they were welcomed by Mrs. Debs. A better explanation is
found in Kate Debs' desire to protect her husband's health. This
version is advanced by Eugene Debs himself in an article written
Jater in 1922: "How My Wife Has Helped Me." Debs recorded
his wife's talents as a homemaker, her services as secretary in
the early days, ''her loving ministrations during days of trial
and adversity."
THE BENDING CROSS
"My wife," Debs wrote, "has been with me heart to heart, in
unvarying loyalty and devotion, in every hour of trial and every
moment of adversity. She has stood by my side without flinching
when I was vilified, condemned and socially scorned and exiled;
when I went to prison with the world's execration in my ears
and my own soul erect and unafraid. . . During my prison
days she awaited my return with a patience as sublime as the
devotion that inspired it and the courage that sustained it, with-
out ever uttering a disheartening word."
Finally, in a particularly revealing and pertinent passage, the
Socialist leader concluded: "But it must be confessed that my
wife has not always been truthful when inquiry has been made
as to my whereabouts when I was tired and worn and she. had
me tucked away for needed rest . . . I should be a far better
man than I am if I had been as good a husband to my wife as
she has been a wife to me."
The early months of 192!il were a constant strain to Kate Debs.
Her mother. Mrs. Baur, then far into her eighties, required even
than Eugene Debs. The front porch on thehouse,
which had been neglected throughout Debs' term in Atlanta,
was being repaired, and Kate lived in mortal dread that her
mother would be injured by falling into one of the gaping holes
in. the porch floor. At length she could stand it no longer, and
Mrs. Baur was dispatched to the home of her son Arthur. A few
weeks later she died. Kate Debs' health. now broke, and she was
confined to bed with influenza. Recovering from this illness,
she was forced to make several trips to a nerve specialist in
Indianapolis.
Meanwhile EugeneDebs, his own life in a shuddering collapse,
was trying to fulfill an oQIigation to his recent associates. He had
been sensitive to prison conditions since his childhood, when he
first read LesMwerab"le8. His own terms in the Cook County
Jail, Woodstock, Moundsville, and Atlanta had imparted
tailed lmowledge and intimate loathing. The qualities which
Eugene Debs most hated were summarized by the crude, petty,
furtive, brutal methods of the penal system. During his con-
finement he was content to meliorate the conditions of the other
inmates: But on his release he again became a radical, deter-
WORLD SOCIALISM
mined to uproot a lust for vengeance which he considered
medieval and hateful.
Scarcely had Debs returned to Terre Haute in when he
contracted to write a series twelve articles about Atlanta for
the Bell Syndicate, which was to publish them in commercial
newspapers throughout the country. Debs lacked the strength
to carry through this task alone. The ghost writer chosen to
help him was young David Karsner, the Sunday editor of the
New York Call. Karsner had reported the 1918 trial and Debs'
trip to Moundville, had frequently interviewed the Socialist
leader, and had written a brief biography of Debs in 1919. The
two men knew each other's methods, liked and respected one
another.
Karsner arrived in Terre Haute on March 19, 1922, and Debs
immediately began work on the articles. His appearance startled
the reporter. His lips were almost colorless, the skin tight around
his mouth, his eyes "too bright," Karsner thought. But each
morning he strode up and down his study, his voice flaming as
in the old days, and dictated painful memories of the prisons
he had known. Although he tried to restrain his tone so that the
articleg would be printed, the final result was shocking, bitter.
agonized. Recalling a life in shadow and despair, Debs' mind
knew stormy autumn when compassion flashed like
lightning across the clouded skies. The enormous effort of
ing forth these visions could not be maintained. After a few
minutes, an hour or two, Debs would signal a close, and.the two
men would wander forth in search of friendship and entertain.
ment.
Several times Debs escorted Karsner to Western movies.
which called to mind his own experiences in Colorado organizing
the Brotherhood of Firemen and the Western Federation of
Miners. He kept up a running commentary all through the
films. When a scene took place in a brawling saloon, Debs ex-
claimed in delight: "I've seen places like that a thousand times."
Debs decided one morning to visit another local citizen who
had been with him in Atlanta prison, but an automobile was
needed. Debs had. never owned either a carriage or a car; his
only vehicle was a bicycle on which he sedately through
THE BENDING CROSS
the streets of Terre Haute. A bicycle was scarcely suitable to
carry Debs and Karsner several miles to the friend's home. So
Debs decided to enlist Phil Reinbold as chauffeur, and he
strolled into Reinbold's bakery. The proprietor immediately
fell upon Debs with both hands, leaving two white and sticky
handprints on the tails of his coat. Reinbold agreed to take the
afternoon off and drive Debs out to the friend's place in the
country. It was decided that they would start at 12:80, and
Debs spent the remainder of the morning acquainting Karsner
with the man they intended to visit.
Buster Clark, once king of the red-light district in Terre
Haute, had a reputation of being as honest as anybody in his
business. Legend reported that he drove all the panders out of
town, and that no prostitute without previous experience could
operate in his a.rea. Among vice kings, this was exceptional
morality. Doubtless deserving to serve time on a hundred legiti-
mate charges, Clark was finally sent to prison on a frame-up by
his associates. Although he and Eugene Debs had lived in the
same town all their lives, they first met in Atlanta. Close ac
quaintance taught Debs that the vice lord was kindly and gen-
erous in his relations with other prisoners, and the Socialist
leader concluded that Clark, like everybody else, was merely
a victim of his surroundings.
When Debs, Karsner, and Reinbold arrived at the ramshackle
farm near Fort Harrison, Clark was sitting in a chair on the
lawn. He was a huge fat man, weighing nearly two hundred fifty
pounds, with sweat running down his red neck and his sticky
black hair parted in the middle. His handshake was weak, his
jaw flabby, his lips heavy, his ears gnarled and colorless. A derby
hat was tilted over one eye. Diamond rings shone from his fin-
gers, and another stone "as big as a dime" from his flashy neck-
tie. He greeted Debs enthusiastically and introduced the three
visitors to his wife, who seemed perfectly healthy but was slowly
dying of paresis.
As the former convicts philosophized about their past, Debs
contended that each man followed a predestined course. His
own place he had found among the "scorned and shunned out-
casts." Then he continued: "Well, I would rather a thousand
WORLD SOCIALISM
times stagger to the judgment bar of God Almighty with the
habitues of the Red Light dist.rict than to appear before St.
Peter among the swaggering elements of the Country Club."
"The trouble with you, Gene," Buster Clark protested, "is
that you were born 2,000,000 years ahead of your time. The
world ain't cut out for men like you. Human beings are rotten,
corrupt, and that's all there is to it. You believe that people are
corrupt through circumstances over which they have little say.
I don't. I made my life and I fought for it at every step and I'd
fight for it now all over again, maybe not just the same way,
maybe I wouldn't open a house again, but I guess it wouldn't
take on a much different color at that."
So there sat Buster Clark, with nothing in the world but a few
diamonds, a small farm, two dozen chickens, a wife dying of
paresis-surrounded by a waste land and musing that it had all
been played the right way.
David Karsner and Debs spent many hours discussing the
current American writers and the future of literature. They
shared an acute admiration of Walt Whitman and Horace
Traubel-Karsner had named his daughter for the first and
written a brief biography of the second. Although Debs was in
no sense a judicious critic, someof his comments were peculiarly
penetrating. Of H. L Mencken he said: "His style is incisive,
quick, sure, and he has a good bit to say. But it is all so very
negative, so hopeless, so pessimistic, that when you get through
reading him you wonder what life is all about ~ d whether there
is any sense in anything."
Among the poets Debs preferred his friend Horace Traubel,
and among prose writers the Englishman Frank Harris, who
was also a personal friend. But he protested that Harris' biog-
raphy of Oscar Wilde was "so brutally frank and so cruel . . .
there should be a line drawn somewhere between that part of a
man's life that is peculiarly personal to him and his, and that
part which belongs to the public. I would not want Frank Harris
to be my biographer," he added to the amusement of his wife
and Karsner.
Two Socialist novelists, Upton Sinclair and Jack London, were
enduring favorites of Eugene Debs. London and John Peter
Altgeld were the two men whom Debs always admired but never
met. After London's death in 1916 the Socialist leader had writ-
ten a eulogistic epitaph for the Rip-Saw. He now elaborated his
views in a conversation with David Karsner: "I think London
wrote some mighty fine books, imd 1 specially liked his Call of
the Wild, The Iran Heel, and The Sea Wolf. London was unques-
tionably a genius, an artist of the first water. There was nothing
surprising to me in the fact that Jack endorsed the war. His was
a romantic mind, an adventuresome spirit, and that combina-
tion cannot be expected to sink itself into the grooves of logic
and practicability 0"
When the discussions between Debs and Karsner ventured
into trade unionism, the Socialist leader praised William Z.
Foster, the leader of the 1919 Great St.eel Strike who had re-
cently joined the Communists. Debs was sitting in his favorite
leather armchair. a gift thirty-five yea.rs earlier from the Broth-
erhood of Locomotive Firemen. His gaunt hands seemed to
caress the wide leather arms as he spoke: "Foster has the right
idea of a labor organization, but the pity of it is that he will
not be able to make any headway with industrial unionism as
long as Gompers and his crowd hold labor by the throat."
This led Debs into a diatribe against the AFL chieftain. His
analysis was far from reliable. Speaking of the Pullman boycott,
Debs declared: "Gompers did everything he could to break the
strike. He was then, as now, hand in glove with the employers
so far as any actual freedom of the workers was concerned."
This is a strained interpretation of the AFL actions. Gompers
had issued numerous protests against Federal interference; he
had announced his support of the strikers; he had appealed for
contributions for the legal defense fund after the ARU leaders
were arrested. His actions were tardy and halfhearted, but they
cast doubt on the contention that he was "hand in glove with
the employers" in 1894.
The conversation meandered onward to the subject of Jesus of
Nazareth, which always intrigued Debs. Karsner idly mentioned
his doubts abou.t the celibacy of Jesus. Debs found this a very
interesting notion, and he himself had speculated on the topic.
Pressed by Karsner, he explained his belief "that Jesus had an
WORLD SOCIALISM
intense passionate love for Mary Magdalene. I believe that if the
real story were known it would prove to be one of the most
beautiful love episodes in history." He was refreshed by the
thought of a romance between the Son of God and a woman
accused of prostitution. ""If there did exist warm human love
between Jesus and Mary of Magda, how beautiful it must have
been and what an inspiration it would be to those who are hor-
rified by the thought of such a union, to know of it."
When with David Karsner and his brother Theodore, Debs
again revealed his playful, lusty spirit. Chivalrous to the extent
of prudery in the company of women, he could still be coarse
and vulgar with his friends. About 1914 George D. Brewer,
formerly one of his colleagues on the Appeal to Reason, was pub-
lishing the Worker's Chronicle in Pittsburg, Kansas. Brewer
vividly described the murder of a Mexican revolutionary in a
Paris cafe. Three assassins crept furtively to a window, fired
five fatal shots into the body of the Mexican radical, and then
made their escape. When this issue of the Ohronicle arrived in
Terre Haute, the ferret eyes of Eugene Debs discovered a typo-
graphical error in the word "shots!' His hilarious letter to
Brewer maliciously suggested that the Mexican revolutionary
had been sent out on a foul. All revolutionaries, he commented,
were entitled to better treatment from editors.
This cajolery was a common pastime for Eugene and Theo-
dore Debs. Having read hundreds of mawkish poems in praise
of his brother, Theodore vowed to shoot any poet on sight.
Karsner promptly reported this statement to Debs, with his
own endorsement. Debs laughed heartily and continued puffing
a t his pipe. Finally he broke off smoking to roar at the journalist:
"I have told Theodore that if he didn't behave himself and treat
me with proper respect I would feed his hide to the wolves, which
are still prowling around Indiana prairies. As for you, well--"
Karsner endured this nonsense, but Theodore had his re-
venge. A few months later Eugene Debs was confined in a
sanitarium. Theodore, on one of his frequent visits, managed
to steal all of his brother's underwear.
On his last day in Terre Haute Karsner was invited to lunch
at tl1e Debs' home. Debs, jaded by the i n c ~ s n t requests for
THE BENDING CROSS
lecture dates, complained that he wanted to be left alone until
he had recovered his health. His wife softly commented: "Well,
deariet suppose no one paid any attention to you at all. Suppose
when you came out of prison they all had let you severely alone
and had not asked for a speech or a letter. You'd feel mighty
blue about that indifference to you, now wouldn't you?"
Perhaps Debs felt somewhat ashamed of this snivelling about
his own condition, in which he had never indulged until the
very twilight of his life. At any rate, he hastily corrected him-
self: "I am not ungrateful. I am only tired. very tired,"
Those early months of 1922 were brightened by occasional
golden moments. Debs and Karsner one morning visited a local
grammar school. All of the children, mostly from mining fam-
ilies, were eating lunch. But they leaped to their feet when they
saw Debs and clustered around to talk with him. Another day
the Children's Crusade for Amnesty visited Terre Haute to call
on Debs. This modern crusade, conceived and organized by
Kate and Frank O'Hare, was composed of the wives and chil-
dren of the political prisoners still in jail. They were on their
way to Washington to make a personal appeal to the President.
His brief contact with these women and children, who had suf-
fered so bravely for so long a time, brought new zeal and de-
termination to Debs' preparation of the prison articles.
These glimmerings of joy, however, were all too brief. The
general pattern of 1922 was woven from constant annoyances
and deepening gloom. On every hand Debs seemed to meet
duplicity, frustration, and sorrow. Soon after his release he
received a congratulatory telegram from Father Michael J.
Byrne, the prison chaplain who had become his friend. The
next day Father Byrne died. Three months later the Socialist
leader wrote to J. O. Bentall, a political prisoner at Leaven-
worth. His letter was returned with a curt note from the prison
officials: "Inmates of this institution are not permitted to cor-
. respond with inmates or former inmates of this or any other
penal institution, except by special permission from the
warden ..... "
In March, Irwin St. John Tucker arrived in Terre Haute.
While Debs was in prison, Tucker had established the Deb8
WORLD SOCIALISM
Freedom M cmthly to aid in the amnesty campaign, listing the
Socialist leader as chief contributor. Debs had warm respect
for Tucker, and even considered asking him to help with the
prison articles if Karsner felt unable to spare the time. But
Tucker returned to Chicago after a brief talk with Eugene and
Theodore Debs, wrote up the interview and published it over
their names, making it appear that they had written it. Debs
had always suffered from the exercise of this license by Socialist
editors, and his wonted reaction was to complain bitterly. But
he was now so weary that his only mention of the affair was in a
private conversation with David Karsner.
Then the prison articles began to appear. The first one
ried an evasive heading: "(The views expressed in this article
and in others of this series are those of Eugene V. Debs and not
of the Bell Syndicate, Inc. Mr. Debs has agreed not to insert
any political propaganda into the article.)" Debs was completely
unable to abide by the agreement. The restriction was impos-
sible. The articles placed responsibility for the penal system on
the larger capitalist system of which it formed a part. In his
first column, Debs had written: "A total of almost four years
of my life has been spent behind the bars as a common prisoner;
but an experience of such a nature cannot be measured in point
of years. It is measured by the capacity to see, to feel and to
comprehend the social significance and the human import of the
prison in its relation to society."
The commercial newspapers, although they were eager to
publish sensational exposes of the Federal prisons, were unwill-
ing to consider ""the prison in its relation to society." Debs'
first nine articles were edited before they appeared. The final
three were not printed at all In large measure, the excruciating
labor of preparing the material had gone for nothing. Not until
after Debs' death were the original articles published in their
entirety. And, ironically, his doctor had warned that Debs was
committing suicide by his stubborn insistence on writing the
articles immediately after his release.
Late in March, only a fortnight after the death of Mrs.
Baur, another letter from Otto Branstetter urged Debs to
nounce publicly his support of the Party. Kate Debs
was ill from anguish and worry. Debs himself had spent the
previous night pacing the floor, unable to sleep, unable to stop
thinking. He had repeatedly said that he wanted to be left alone
to decide his affiliation in his own good time. Now his disgust
and self-pity flowed into a molten accusation to Branstetter:
You cannot seem to understand that I am sick and worn and
that I have not had the ghost of a chance to rest since I got out
of the penitentiary .... But this probably does not mean any-
tbing to you for I doubt if you can understand it. You may be
sure it is not to my liking to write to you in this way .. I have
made it a life-long rule to keep my troubles to myself. But your
persistency must be my excuse. You and those you speak for
insist that I must declare myself and of course declare myself
your way. It seems to me that you would.not care what bec8Ille
of me so I did what you wanted me to do .... I have given all
but my life and I would like to keep that for a little while yet.
Perhaps I may and perhaps not.
Debs added that a public statement by him would merely
serve as additional fuel for a factional fight which was "utterly
disgusting in some of its phases!' He absolutely refused to take
part: "I have never engaged in that sort of thing, having al-
ways considered it beneath me, and I shall not do so now." He
thought that his continued membership in the Socialist Party
should be enough to satisfy everybody. He planned to go away
"to a retreat in the mountains where I may have a chance to
get into condition to do something."
Four days later a letter from Branstetter stated that "a
personal controversy" was "entirely foreign to" his intentions.
Repenting, Debs wrote a conciliatory reply: "No, our contro-
versy cannot become personal in any unpleasant sense. I know
you are actuated by the best of motives and I give you full
credit though I may not at all agree with you. I am glad to have
this candid expression of your views."
But Debs also U1lderscored his partial disagreement with the
Socialist leaders. In a special article to the Appeal to Reason, he
stated that the three immediate problems were aid to the Bol-
shevik government of Russia, a general amnesty for political
prisoners, and unity of the radical parties. Any leaders who op-
WORLD SOCIALISM 481
posed such unity, Debs bluntly declared, should be thrust aside
by the rank and file. .
[ 3 ]
As THE BUMMER approached Debs' health went into a long
cline. Drastic action became imperative. Yielding at last to the
remonstrances of his doctor, he agreed to seek out a "retreat
in the mountains." The doctor, however, may have disapproved
of his choice. Joseph W. Sharts, one of Debs' attorneys in the
1918 trial, had interested his client in nature cures.
Accordingly, Debs now resolved to go to Lindlahr. Sanitarium,
a resort in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, ll-
linois. As he left for Lindlahr in mid-July, he predicted that two
or three months of rest would completely restore his health.
The medical staff at the sanitarium took a more serious view
of the situation. They ordered Debs to halt all correspondence,
to restrict the number of visitors, and to follow a leisurely sched-
ule. These orders were practically impossible of fulfillment. A
flood of visitors from Chicago and surrounding towns descended
upon Eugene Debs, and they proved most obstinate in their
determination to talk with their idol. Otto Branstetter continued
his requests for speaking engagements, personal appearances,
and press releases. The metropolitan newspapers either ignored
the Socialist leader or published dispatches that made him
scream with anger. He had scarcely reached Lindlahr when t,he
Christian Science MonitO'f published an unsigned account of a
conversation which Debs had held with Rose Pastor Stokes just
before leaving Terre Haute. The article quoted Debs in a num-
ber of extreme statements: "I am unqualifiedly opposed to com-
munism. It has not a single constructive plank in its entire
platform. . . . I am in deepest sympathy with Russia and her
people in their efforts to work out a government in which
czarism has no part. But I am opposed and strongly opposed to
dictatorship, regardless of the class by which it is prac-
ticed .... "
Otto Branstetter sent a clipping of the story to Debs, asking
whether it was true. Debs was highly mystified by the origin
41st THE BENDING CROSS
of the dispatch. He and Mrs. Stokes had been the only partic-
ipants in the conversation. It was unreasonable to believe that
Mrs. Stokes, herself a Communist, would publicize such an anti-
Communist and distorted account of the discussion. Debs pre-
ferred to let the incident end quietly, and he refused to authorize
its use by Branstetter or to issue a denial. Thus a newspaper
story, of which Debs wrote that "some of the interview is true
and some is not," was publicly offered as his position on the
Bolshevik Revolution.
Some of the story was doubtless true, because it was authen-
ticated a few days later. During his interview with the Socialist
notification committee in 1920, Debs had upheld the Com-
munist theory of a workers' dictatorship by stating: "During
the transition period the revolution must protect itself." Just
before his release from Atlanta, he convinced Lincoln Steffens
that he understood the denial of civil liberties in Russia. "And
he promised me then and there," the journalist recalled. "never
again to denounce the Russian Revolution on any charge with-
out first hearing my answer to it." Debs now forgot both of
these earlier statements. He received a telegram from Russia on
July 24, 1922, asking him to request clemency for twenty-two
Russian Social Revolutionaries on trial for treason. Two days
later he dispatched a wire to Nikolai Lenin: ''I protest with all
civilized people of our common humanity against the execution
of any of the Social Revolutionaries or the unjust denial of their
liberty. Soviet Russia can set an example by refusing to follow
the practices of world-wide czardom and should uphold the
higher standards we seek to erect and profess to observe."
This telegram set off a tremendous stir in the radical ranks.
Lincoln Steffens promptly wrote a letter of protest, but he was
not favored with an answer. Perhaps Steffens' letter did not
even reach the Socialist leader, since at this time all of his mail
was being received and answered by other members of his fam-
ily. The two men never saw each other again. Many Communists
interpreted Debs' action as a sign that he was becoming senile
or even i n s n e ~ this was not true at all. Many SociaJists re-
joiced that Debs had completely broken with all Communists;
this was not true either.
WORLD SOCIALISM
488
Eugene Debs was still a contributing editor of the Liherator,
which was increasingly shifting toward the Communist philos-
ophy. And less than a month after his telegram to Lenin, Debs
rushed to the defense of one of the Communist leaders, William
Z. Foster. In August Foster visited Denver to fill a speaking
engagement. He was arrested at his hotel before the lecture,
driven across the state line into Wyoming, and dumped out in
the desert, with orders never to return to that area.
News of this incident roused Eugene Debs to high :fury. He
immediately wrote a warm and fraternal letter to the victim:
Dear Comrade Foster: If 1 were not confined in a sanitarium
under treatment 1 would be at once with you and tender my
services in any way in my power. . . . '
You are to be congratulated, after all, upon the infamous
outrages perpetrated upon you in the name of capitalist law and
justice, for in these outrages . is revealed the fear of their
thieving and brutal masters, and this is the highest compliment
they could possibly pay you . all 1 have to say is that when
1 have recovered my strength sufficiently to take up my work
again 1 shall be with you shoulder to shoulder in your stand for
the working class and industrial freedom.
By August 26, 1922, when he wrote this letter to William Z.
Foster, Debs' strength and optimism had begun their recovery.
It was already clear that his series of prison articles would yield
little money and less reform. Most papers were unwilling to
print tbem., One publisher even stated that he would not carry
them if full advertising rates were paid for the space. Debs did
not show very great concern. Not even a rumor that the Terre
Haute newspapers had been forbidden to mention his name in
any way could interfere with the surge of new vigor. His only
comment was half in jest: "I shall pry them open in due time,
when the necessity arises."
As Debs 'began to recover he found scant satisfaction in the
nature-eure diet of grain and fresh fruit. It proved to be easy
to slip away from the crowded, bustling corridors of the sani-
tarium. He spent less and less time on the grounds where he was
supposedly confined. August Claessens, who went to visit him
one evening, was startled to find that he was not in his room. An
THE BENDING CROSS
orderly laughingly revealed that an ex-railroad buddy, now the
proprietor of a restaurant on Ashland Avenue in Chicago, often
took Debs for a walk in the evening. Immediately divining the
truth, Claessens rushed his small body and giant cigar to the
restaurant. There sat the convalescent, gazing hopelessly at
a steak that drooped over the plate onto the table. Two waiters
and the proprietor hovered anxiously about the table. When the
proprietor noticed the arrival of the other Socialist, he burst out
angrily: "Goddammit, Mr. Claessens, they're starving him;
those bastards are starving him." Claessens and Debs burst into
hilarious laughter, Debs rocking back and forth in his chair.
the cigar rocking up and down in Claessens' mouth.
By September Debs was well enough to search actively for
amusement. He ran foot races with a young tuberculosis patient.
He spent many pleasant evenings with Mrs. Ralph Chaplin and
Mr. and Mrs. Carl Haessler, all of whom lived near Lindlahr.
Haessler, formerly 'an instructor of philosophy at the University
of Illinois, had just been released from prison after a term for
anti-war activity. Ralph Chaplin, convicted with the 105 Wob-
blies in the Chicago trial, was still in Leavenworth, and Debs
repeatedly assured Mrs. Chaplin that her husband would soon
be free. The Socialist leader found great pleasure in these brave,
cultured people, and he played for long hours with their young
children.
! The outlaw strike by the railroad shopmen, which took place
in the summer of 1922, was of particular interest to Debs be-
cause it was broke)). by means of injunctions, Negro strike-
breakers, the National Guard, and the treachery of the railway
Brotherhoods. Pointing out the parallel to the Pullman boycott,
Debs warned that the existing open-shop drive could only be
defeated by a maximum degree of labor unity. This unity, he
said, must be achieved in spite of the opposition of the craft
union leaders. Talking with Carl Haessler during the strike,
the Socialist leader reflected upon the fact that union railroaders
had carried him to prison.
In September the conservative policies of the BrotherhoQds
were further emphasized for Eugene Debs. His own former
union, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, voted down a
WORLD SOCIALISM
convention proposal to invite him to speak. He noted this action
in a long and reminiscent press release: "I did not start out ex-
pecting gratitude and I have never been disappointed ....
My heart has been. is and will be with the working class. and
even though they deny me and reject me and turn mefrom their
ranks. they can never turn themselves from my heart."
A sure token of Debs' mental state always appeared in his
recurrent musings about death. The stunning demise of- his
parents in 1906 had revealed to him. for the first Hme. the
transitory character of human life. He had promptly registered
a will at the Vigo County Courthouse. Seven years later the
Medical Review of Reviews asked him to contribute to a sympo-
sium on euthanasia. Debs replied that he favored mercy killing
"upon the voluntary request of the already doomed sufferer, or.
if he has already passed to the stage of mental irresponsibility. of
those responsible for him." In obvious good humor. he con-
tinued: "It ought to be the privilege of every human being to
cross the River Styx in the boat of his own choosing . . ."
Death seemed a vague and distant unknown in 1913. It was
twined around his heart in 1922. when he burst forth to Otto
Branstetter: "I have given all but my life and I would like to
keep that for a little while yet. Perhaps I may and perhaps not."
By the autumn he again had a poised. objective view of the
matter. In discussing the newspaper business with a friend, he
took occasion to philosophize on the imminence of death: "The
newspaper men have to keep pace with modern times. There is a
rush about news gathering that we never had before. For ex-
ample. I appreciate my own unimportance, but when the report
was sent out that I was ill. the Associated Press sent a represent-
ative to find out my exact condition. I suppose they have my
obituary written but I'm going to prevent its publication as long
as possible."
The final days of Debs' confinement at Lindlahr were more
vacation than convalescence. Sheriff George Eckert and his
daughter drove to Elmhurst from Woodstock. lllinois. where
Eckert had been Debs' jailer in 1895. The sheriff had become
quite friendly with Kate and Eugene Debs. and each Christmas
for twenty-six years he had Sent them a reminder of the old
days. As Debs talked with Eckert, who was eighty-one years
old and had fought in the Civil War, he felt more sanguine
about the chances of living a few more years.
One stroke of fortune which fell to Debs during those weeks
was a chance to renew his friendship with Carl Sandburg. The
reporter, poet, and biographer had been casually acquainted
with Debs 1910, when he served as secretary to the Socialist
mayor of Milwaukee. Now working on the Chicago Daily N eW8,
Sandburg lived only three blocks from the sanitarium. He and
Debs frequently traded visits in order to discuss the Socialist
movement and Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln,
which was shaping up after years of research. It was a delight
for Debs, who had accepted every discredited legend about the
Civil War President, to chat about Lincoln with somebody who
knew the facts and seized the spirit of a mystical career.
Sinclair Lewis arrived at Lindlahr in August for a brief rest,
and he was quickly recruited for the discussions held by Debs
and Sandburg. One Saturday night Sandburg even brought his
guitar to 'the sanitarium and gave the patients "a most charming
entertainment in folk lore, etc. It was a complete conquest,"
Debs wrote to David Karsner, "and they all love him. Lewis will
also entertain them and the patients here feel big with impor-
tance. No 'Main Streeters' here."
Late in November Debs realized that he had no legitimate
excuse to prolong his stay at Lindlahr, and so he returned to
Terre Haute. A few days later he received a brief note from
Carl ''You will always be close to us. The only way
we can decently remember you and what you left with us here
will be a certain way of living it, maybe dying it.
"And some day I hope to get the strong truth about those
hands of yours into a poem. It's only a hope but rn try for it
and learn something. . . .
"With you it isn't really a good-by because you are st.ill here."
[ J. ]
ON OCTOBER 8, 1922, six weeks before he left Lindlahr, Eugene
Debs' declaration of his political views appeared in the New
WORLD SOCIALISM
York Call. He had resolved to keep his membership in the S ~
cialist Party. This decision cannot be explained wholly on the
basis of his principles. Debs had serious disagreements with the
CODllD.unists about the imminence of revolution in the United
States, about the need for a workers' dictatorship, about the
Third International He felt that the Communists had failed
him and the workers in the 1920 election and in the am1}esty
campaign. But he also seriously differed from the Socialists
about the Russian Revolution, industrial unionism, and class-
conscious politics.
The personal nature of Debs' reasoning appeared in his state-
ment in the Call. He was unable to admit failure and make a
fresh start by resigning from the Socialist Party. As he declared:
'1 have spent the better part of my active life in its service and
why should I now turn upon it and rend it? ... I admit the
party h.9.s made some mistakes and that it is not today what I
should like to see it. but the same would be true of any other
party I might join."
Having tried for twenty-five years to build a revolutionary
organization, Debs did not see how any other party, working
with "the same material, the same comrades, the same ultimate
aims," could succeed if the Socialist Party had failed. He clung
to his intention of uniting all American radicals in one great
revolutionary party. So he again praised the Communist Work-
ers Party and John Keracher's Proletarian Party, which had
split from the Communists in 1920: "I know many of the mem-
bers of the Workers Party and of the Proletarian Party and I
know that in taking the position they have they are actuated
by the best of motives and that they are as honest as we are in
their efforts to build up a party to serve the working class in the
revolutionary struggle."
CHAPTERXXII
[ 1 J
E
UGENE DEBS returned toTerre Haute in November of
1922. He was supposedly cured and healthy. But by
Christmas he was again confined to his bed with lum-
bago, unable to receive visitors, unable to answer correspond-
ence. In his earlier years a fortnight of convalescence had cus-
tomarily followed six months of rending toil. This was radically
changed. A major part of his time for the next five years was to
be devoted to caring for his own health. Preparation for a lec-
ture tour now involved at least three months of rest. A few
weeks of strenuous activity exhausted him completely, forcing
another retreat to the ministrations of his wife or of Lindlahr
Sanitarium.
The revised methods necessitated by his broken health help
to explain many of the abortive starts and the equivocal posi-
tions held by Eugene Debs during the final years of his life. He
had never been able to sit down in his study with a pile of books
and think his way to a conclusion. His understanding was a
product, not of scholarly research, but of participation in the
problems and the struggles of the common people. He himself
distrusted the decisions he made on the basis of facts gathered
by other men. Howeyer emphatically they were expressed, they
were subject to prompt change and even to contradiction.
Thus, in October of 1922, he announced his continued ad-
herence to the Socialist Party. But his actions of the following
months showed that, on many issues, he was more in accord
with the Communists than with his own party. He remained a
contributing editor of The Liberator, which was rapidly becom-
ing an unofficial spokesman for the Communist Workers Party.
In December of 1922, a brief four months after he had sent his
telegram of protest to Nikolai Lenin, Debs wrote for this
journal an article in praise of the Russian Bolsheviks:
438
WORLD SOCIALISM 489
For five years they have stood with more than Spartan cour-
age against the foul assaults of the whole criminal capitalist
world.
They have waded through hell in their own blood to banish
hell from the earth and bring peace to the world.
They have fought in rags to clothe the naked, they have
starved themselves to feed the race, and they have died in
fetters to free the world.
The Russian Republic stands triumphant, gloriously trium-
phant on its fifth anniversary, a beacon light of hope and
promise to all mankind!
The greatest division between Debs and his party, however,
arose from the issue of industrial unionism. A few important
unions. notably the needle-trades unions of New, York, were
still led by Socialist officers. Each of these unions contained a
strong Communist minority. The Socialist officials, in order to
resist the growing influence of the Communists, had reached a
working agreement with the Gompers' grouping in the AFL.
A major plank in the agreement was complete abandonment
by the Socialists of the drive for industrial unions. Leadership
in this campaign was firmly held by the Trade Union Educa-
tional League, in which the main figure was the Communist
William Z. Foster.
Eugene Debs balked at even tacit endorsement of the policies
of Samuel Gompers. In September, 19!1!l, his article for the
Socialist Press Service bluntly declared: "There is but one labor
organization absolutely free from capitalist domination in the
United States and that is theI.W.W., and its headquarters are
in the penitentiary." This sentence was struck out by Otto
Branstetter, who then wrote Debs asking approval of the dele-
tion. Debs' reply was hesitant: "I would rather the alteration
had not been made but perhaps you are right, and I am satis-
fied."
He was not, however. satisfied. His first public appearance in
1923, after he recovered from the lumbago which marred his
release from Lindlahr, was made in Chicago. He seized the
chance to visit the offices of the Trade Union Educational
League. His unannounced visit was a great surprise to Earl
Browder, alone in the office at the time. Debs remembered
THE BENDING CROSS
Browder's imprisonment for anti-war activity in Kansas City
in 1918. They talked at length about the need to work within
existing unions in order to convert the labor movement to
industJ."ial unionism. Debs seemed eager to use the Trade Union
Educational League as an organization which could unite the
Socialists and Communists for a common program. Before say-
ing good-by to Browder, he. promised to contribute to the
League's magazine, The Labor Herald. His :first article, which
appeared in April, 1928, was an eloquent plea for amalgamation
of the craft unions.
From Chicago Debs journeyed eastward to New York. He was
slated to give a few speeches, but his compelling interest was an
intended conference with Morris Hillquit. The commutation of
Debs' sentence in 1921 had not included a full pardon, and he
believed that he had forfeited his citizenship. On behalf of him-
self and thousands of other ex-convicts, Debs was determined to
crusade for a full restoration of all civil rights. Immediately
after his release from Atlanta, he had set Morris Hillquit to
work checking the legal aspects of the matter. He now intended
to get together with Hillquit and plan the entire campaign. It
promised to be a worthy battle, just like the old days.
Entering his office one morning, Hillquit found Debs already
there, slumped in a chair and waiting impatiently. Debs was
joyous in his anticipation of the coming fight. He immediately
launched into a fervent presentation of the plans for his crusade.
Listening, Hillquit was uneasy. The task before him was not a
pleasant one. His research had uncovered some recalcitrant
facts. Finally he broke in hesitantly: "The weakness of your
case lies in the fact that you have not forfeited your citizenship
at all. You are still a citizen of the United States."
"What do you mean. I am still a citizen?" Debs stormed back.
"All newspapers assert that I have lost my citizenship and the
United States Attorney General has confirmed the statement."
Hillquit passed to his client an array of legal citations in sup-
port of his position. Debs frowned as he read the memorandum.
At length he passed it back. He seemed heartbroken. Conscious
of his guilt, Hjllquit haltingly suggested: "If you feel like testing
your rights, Gene, you might offer to register and vote in the
WORLD SOCIALISM
441
next election; and if the local election board interferes with you,
we wilI take the case into the courts."
"Oh, they will not question my right to vote in Terre Haute,"
Debs muttered in disgust.
The Socialist leader never visited New York without paying a
special visit to the homeless inhabitants of Union Square to
discuss their problems, cheer them'up, distribute money among
them. There had always been thousands of these outcasts. But
in the pre-War era they were the bacl-water, divorced from the
confident optimism which typified that period. One day before
the World War, Art Young had found Debs in Union Square
and escorted him to the office of TheM IZ8Se8. Young later re-
called that Debs had "talked to a group of artists and writers
with enthusiasm for our work, and hopefulness for the future-
over all his towering form as if looking down from his own
Heaven." A vast disillusionment followed the Treaty of Ver-
sailles and the postwar economic slump. Only the radicals now
dared to be hopeful. The mood of Union Square was engulfing
the city and the nation.
A few weeks after his visit to New York Debs spoke at the
University of Wisconsin in Madison, which was also the state
capital. The lower house of the General Assembly formally
resolved "that the legislature in as far as possible go in a body
to listen to his lecture on socialism and freedom in the University
gymnasium this evening." Eugene Debs had "proved to' be an
outstanding American," said the legislators, 'in that he had the
courage during the hysteria and war madness to stand up and
defend the ideals and splendid traditions of this republic regard-
ing equality of opportunity and the rights of freedom of re-
ligion, free press, free speech and peaceable assemblage, the
keystone and guarantee of free institutions."
This reception, however, was in no sense typical. Hostility
and denunciation were the common reactions to Debs' lecture
tour in 1923. Just two months after the cordiality of Madison,
he encountered the strident resentment of several patriotic
societies in Ohio. Protests by Kiwanis Clubs, posts of the Amer-
ican Legion, Army and Navy Unions, and the commercial
newspapers vastly increased the difficulties of booking halls for
THE llENDING CROSS
his lectures. For the first time in his career, Eugene Debs found
the prominent auditoriums were beyond his reach. But in each
city he ultimately gave his speech, and in each city a capacity
crowd turned out to hear him.
[ i]
THE EXCITEMENT of this transcontinental tour, which carried
him as far as Seattle in September, again wiped out his fragile
strength. While traveling he completely ignored his
ence and refused to see visitors, but these precautions proved
vain. An attack of nervous exhaustion forced a limping
ment to Terre Haute. Through the long autumn of 1923 he
clung to life with feeble hands. His home was converted into a
hospital. Theodore closed the office in order to spend all of his
time with his adored brother. Kate, herself far from well, hov-
ered attentively nearby. Debs delayed his recovery by his own
exaggerated prejudices against all types of medicine. Theodore
reluctantly admitted that Eugene had only an even chance to
survive, but the pa tien t stubbornly rejected aU heart stimulants.
Time after ti e Theodore was practicany required to use force
before Debs would submit to the medical prescriptions.
By March of 1924 it was apparent that Debs would recover.
Although nobody was certain of the reasons, Theodore ascribed
the recovery to his brother's dogged deterniination and the skill
of the doctor. Even Debs recognized that the end was drawing
near. While he was sti1l confined to bed, he donated most of his
library to the Rand School of Social Science, a Socialist Party
school in New York. Into the boxes were packed complete files
of every publication for which he had written. Nearly twenty
volumes of the LOOO'ITUIti1Je Firemen's Magazine-the leather
decayed, the memories ripe and intimate-including the volume
which he had given to Kate three years before their marriage;
the minute books of the Supreme Council of the United Orders
of Railway Employes; the Railway Times and the Social
Democratic Herald-they represented half a lifetime. The rest
of the story was in the Appeal to Reason, from the golden years
of the Socialist Party; in the National and the I
WORLD SOCIALISM
temational Socialist Review; in the Nationalist and the Challenge
and the Camrade.
A true indication of Debs' perspectives is given by the thor-
oughness with which he uprooted his possessions. He yielded up
books which had been presented to him by David Karsner,
Horace Traubel, Frank P. Walsh, A. M. Simons, Elbert Hub-
bard, Morris HiIlquit, Henry Demarest Lloyd. He wrenched
from his home the scrapbooks which had been compiled with
so much care and precision. They held more than four thousand
pages of newspaper clippings, doggerel, reports of his speeches,
articles about Robert Ingersoll and the 1905 revolution in
Russia, popularized accounts of American and French history.
When u g e n ~ Debs dispatched those boxes to the Rand School,
he parted with the defeats and triumphs, the joy and sorrows
of six decades. It was an eloquent recognition of the end.
He kept only his belief in the final victory of socialism. That
never left him. In June of 1924 an article in Current History
Magazine contended that socialism had begun in Woodstock
jail and died in Atlanta prison. The author was David Karsner.
For nearly six years Karsner had been the most intimate friend
of the Socialist leader. He had reported the Cleveland trial,
journeyed with Debs to Moundsville, frequently visited At-
lanta. He had helped to write the series of articles about the
penal system. He and Debs had discussed Western movies,
contemporary fiction, Jesus of Nazareth, Russia and the Com-
munists.
Always loyal to personal friends, Debs felt no bitterness to-
ward the young journalist. But he refused to admit the failure
of his own convictions. When asked about Karsner's article,
he smiled sadly across his wrinkled face. "I am sorry that Da vid
did that," Debs murmured, "because he will regret it and be
unhappy over it some day. He is supersensitive and very young.
He has had some trying experiences, had trouble with his col-
leagues and has acted unwisely. If I had been with him, he
would have done otherwise .... No, no, Socialism will never
die. It is inevitable. We may retard or impede its progress
through our poJitical organization. But the inevitable cannot
die."
THE BENDING CROSS
By early summer Debs was strong enough to travel to
Lindlahr, where he underwent another series of nature'-cure
. treatments. He soon returned to his earlier routine at the sani-
tarium: visits with Carl Sandburg in Elmhurst or at the office
of the Chicago Daily N eW8, huge steak dinners at the restaurant
on Ashland Avenue owned by the former railroader, leisurely
conversations with other Socialists. Although constantly ugly
weather deprived him of 81IDshine and fresh air, his health
continued to mend.
Responsibility for Eugene Debs was a severe trial to the doc-
tors at Lindlahr. He persistently wandered away from the sani-
tarium. He gave little heed to the rules about rest and sleep .
. He refused to sacrifice the pleasures of foot racing for so trivial
a reason as a weak heart. His room was usually filled with visi-
tors. But the real crisis in the relations of patient and doctor
was precipitated by the Chicago locals of the bakers' union. In
order to show their affection for the Socialist leader, they baked
It cake three feet in diameter and at least that high. The phy-
sicians at the sanitarium, dedicated to strict dietary rules, were
astounded when this cake was presented to Debs. It was borne
through the corridors by four men, each of whom held a corner
of a large board. They were surrounded by a gleeful, jabbering
committee from the local One of the doctors, extremely agi-
tated, crowded into Debs' room immediately behind the com-
mittee. Turning to August Claessens, a chance visitor at the
time, he feverishly protested: "Mr. Claessens, this does not
conform to our methods of treatment." Claessens laughingly
t o ~ the doctor away and told him not to worry. The entire
cake was presented to an orphans' home in Chicago.
One day in the late summer Debs journeyed to Lombard,
Illinois, only two miles from Elmhurst, for a visit with Ralph
Chaplin and Carl Sandburg at Chaplin's home. It was a gor-
geous warm day, and soon Debs was comfortably established
in a large wicker chair under an elm which the Chaplins had
named for him. He seemed vigorous and alert, but Chaplin
noticed that his hands "rested strangely stiff and unresponsive"
on the a.rms of the chair. Since both Debs and Chaplin had been
imprisoned for their opposition to the war, they inevitably be-
WORLD SOCIALISM
445
gan to reminisce about life in prison. Debs' voice trembled as he
recalled the inhumanity of it. Seeking some interruption,
Chaplin hastily cut a rosebud and handed it to Debs, saying,
"Maybe this will help ypu to forget."
"It's almost like murder to cut the stem of a beautiful thing
like that!" Debs protested. "Why didn't you let it live?" Small
wonder that so many of his acquaintances contended that he
"wouldn't kill a fly."
As the afternoon wore on Chaplin presented the Socialist
leader with a small watercolor portrait of John Brown which he
had just copied from a biography of the abolitionist. Almost
ecstatic, Debs exclaimed that John Brown had been a true
prophet. Carl Sandburg interposed his own opinion that Brown
had been more like a .brigand. That set the two men into a fierce
argument, and Debs eloquently expounded the entire story of
his foremost idol. Like most arguments, this one was never re-
solved.
That autumn at Lindlahr also marked the first unqualified
attack by Debs against the Communists. Although several
pUblic disputes had occurred since 1919, one overwhelming
factor had prevented a complete rupture. Debs and the Com-
munists shared an unflinching opposition to the capitalist
system. The Communist departure from the Socialist Party had
been stimulated by their desire to repudiate the pro-war so-
cialists of all countries and to support the Russian Bolsheviks.
Both of these positions had been supported by Eugene Debs
before his imprisonment. Similarly, after his release from At-
lanta, he had agreed with the Communist campaigns for Rus-
sian relief, for industrial unionism, and for defense of all political
prisoners.
But other factors were working to separate Eugene Debs and
the Communists. Debs' resentment about the 1920 election and
the campaign for his own pardon played a large part, as did his
inability to leave an organization in which he had spent his
mature years. Even more important, however, were the differ-
ing emphases of Debs and the Communists. Each was strongest
where the other was weakest. Eugene Debs was bone and fiber
of the American people. His sensitivity to the popular mind of
.... 6 THE BENDING CROSS
the workingmen and farmers was almost uncanny. His ideas,
his language, his very personality, were all native to the Mid-
west. This quality" the Communists lacked. Many of their
members were from factory towns where the recent immigrants
had been drawn in their search for work, and the mass repres-
sion alter the war had further separated them from the rest of
the community. The deportation statutes and the criminal
syndicalist laws had been swung like a club at their heads.
Forced underground, they had succumbed to several romantic
and sectarian ideas, and the imprisonment of their leaders had
further disrupted their organization.
Faced with this power which seemed overwhelming, the Com-
munists insisted upon the importance of discipline and ~ r x s t
theory. They claimed that they could ill afford to tolerate divi-
sions within their ranks. but Eugene Debs was not convinced.
He had always ignored the official policies of his party, making
his own policies as he went along. Nor had he ever paid much
attention to Marxist theory. Again a typical Midwesterner, he
had focussed his attention on the immediate facts and the prac-
tical issues that he saw around him. An experimentalist, he
had only one general principle-the achievement of socialism.
Beyond that he improvised. His contempt for technical haggling
and theoretical arguments had always proropted him to refuse
to serve as a convention delegate or as an official in the So-
cialist Party.
Always, that is, until 1923. Alarmed by the disintegration of
the organization which he had helped to found, Debs in that
year agreed to serve as national chairman of the Socialist Party.
Thus he conclusively indicated his basic affiliation. However
much he might co-operate with other groups, his' basic loyalty
was to the Socialists. This new responsibility, added to the dis-
agreements on other points, finally prompted bis cleavage with
the Communists during the Presidential campaign of 1924. The
Socialists endorsed the Progressive candidate, Senator Robert
M. LaFollette. This action was supported by Eugene Debs and
denounced by William Z. Foster, the Communist candidate for
President. Foster described the Progressive movement as a one-
WORLD SOCIALISM
man show, the voice of the middle-class reformers. His demand
for the immediate formation of a farmer-labor party stated that
Debs' endorsement of LaFollette would shock thousands of
workers.
Debs flared 00ck that this was a peculiar attitude for Foster
to take. The Communists themselves, said Debs, would have
endorsed LaFollette, "had not LaFollette, knowing the record
of the Communists and understanding their game, denounced
them and positively refused their endorsement." While ad-
mitting that the Progressives were not a workers' party, Debs
claimed that many of their policies would benefit the common
people.
The Socialists soon learned that they had walked into a trap.
The results of the election almost completed the destruction of
their party. After his defeat Senator LaFolleite withdrew from
the Progressive Party. The railroad Brotherhoods and most AFL
unions joined the exodus. The entire third party collapsed, and
it dragged the Socialist Party down with it. Having led their
members into a much stronger organization, the Socialist of-
ficials now found it difficult to hold them together. The smallest
convention in the history of the Socialist Party met in Chicab10
on February 23, 19i5. There were forty-five delegates, all of
them veterans. Morris Hillquit called them the die-hards.
Eugene Debs witnessed this collapse with anguish and wist-
fulness, but without despair. Writing to his friend Joseph A.
Labadie soon after the election, he voiced a requiem on their
common lives: "I well know, dear Jo, how abnormally big you
are in the cardiac region and how you would if you could give
your all and give it freely to the last drop of your blood to see
your fellow beings free and happy. But it can't be done in any
other than its.own tragically slow and painful way. You and I
can do our little ubnost and then drop away to make room for
others to do the same, and "all the reward, all the honor, all the
satisfaction we ever want is the knowledge that we have given
all and done our best without expecting anything in return.. One
of these good days we shall clasp hands again and sit heart to
heart in 'the dear love of comrades.' ..
THE BENDING CROSS
This mood of calm reflection had disappeared by the time of
the Socialist convention in Chicago. As chairman of the Party,
Eugene Debs delivered the principal address. Although he had
advocated endorsement of LaFollette to bring the Socialists
"into contact with the great body of workers," he had felt very
uncomfortable during the alliance. Now he was glad to be free
again. "I seem to have been delivered from a nightmare," he
laughingly told the 'convention. "While we were in the so-called
Progressive movement 1 felt as if 1 had lost my wings. 1 felt
like an octogenarian snail just crawling along. Now 1 feel as
if 1 could leap from crag to crag like a Rocky Mountain goat:'
The following day, while Debs was presiding over the conven-
tion, John Work was 'astonished to see Stephen Reynolds enter
the hall. Reynolds had dropped out of the Party soon after he
left Terre Haute in 1910. Nobody had seen him for years. Work
concluded that he must have come to talk with Debs. Reynolds
walked to the front of the small hall and sat down immediately
in front of the speakers' 'stand, in full view of the chairman. Debs
didn't smile, didn't wave, didn't blink an eye. When he left the
stand, to the further amazement of John Work, he walked
straight past Reynolds without even nodding to hini.
The effect of the 1924 campaign on the Socialist Party was a
powerful argument for the independent policy advocated by
William Z. Foster. But there was no reconciliation between Debs
and the Communists. Debs was infuriated by the persistent
reports that he had in effect broken with the Socialist Party.
Finally he yielded to the urging of his colleagues and issued a
harsh disclaimer of these statements: "some unscrupulous com-
munist propagandists are using my connection with the Labor
Defense Council as a means of discrediting the socialist party
by spreading the report in a surreptitious way, in accordance
with 'underground' methods, that 1 am really with the com-
munists and a socialist in name only. . . . Now if hereafter
any communist whispers it into your ear that 1 am with the
communists in anything except their right to free sPeech a,nd
other civil rights, just answer by turning your back upon him
and leaving the vulgar falsifier to hi:plSelf."
WORLD SOCIALISM 449.
[ 3 1
"WHENI GO, I shall be going, not stopping. I shall welcome my
new adventure with open arms, shall take old Father Time by
the arm with a smile and make a socialist out of him."
Thus spoke Eugene Debs in 1925 to a reporter for the Terre
Haute Tribune. Much of his time now was spent looking for-
ward to death or backward to the dead. Each week or m.onth
some event called forth a soothing Hood of mellow recollections.
When Waldo R. Browne's biography of Altgeld was published,
Debs received a gift copy from Clarence Darrow and George
Schilling. His letter of thanks contained candid expressions
about two leaders of his age. Although both were lifelong Demo-
crats, Debs could find no resemblance between them. William
Jennings Bryan was found to be "petty, mean and contempti-
ble, ... this shallow-minded mouther of empty phrases, this
pious, canting mountebank, this prophet of the stone age."
Still the Great Commoner "was popularized almost to idolatry
and glorified by press and pulpit as an apostle of truth and an
evangel of religion." On the other hand John Peter Altgeld,
"supremely great . . . in heart and brain, in soul and con-
science," had been "rewarded with contumely, malice, hatred
and almost oblivion." The Socialist leader was confident that
in time these errors would be corrected, "and in that day John
P. Altgeld the hero and martyr, the apostle and saviour of his
age will be known and loved of all men and his memory honored
and revered throughout the world."
Another sign of advanced age appeared at the close of Debs'
letter to Darrow and Schilling. It was signed: "Yours to the last
turning of the road." But that last turn lay somewhere ahead.
In May Debs toured Ohio to rebuild the local branches of the
Socialist Party. In July he and Theodore made a hectic trip
to California on the same mission, and he sPoke in the Holly-
wood Bowl with Upton Sinclair as chairman. He also gave an
address in the Los Angeles zoo, while lions roared accompani-
ment in the background. A few days later Debs spoke in Los
Angeles and then headed for home.
Well-earned recognition by the workingmen of his own com-
munity finally came to Eugene Debs on August !l7. 1925. He
was justly known as the father of the labor movement in Terre
Haute. Fully half of the local- unions in the area had been
launched as a direct result of his efforts, and the others had aU
benefited indirectly from his activities. His experience. his sav-
ings. his magnificent voice and deep compassion had been
lavished freely on the cause of his neighbors. After his release
from Atlanta prison, he threw his great prestige into the cam-
paign for the erection of a new AFL Temple in Terre Haute.
These efforts were successful, and the 1925 cOnvention .of the
Indiana Federation of Labor showed its appreciation of his
services. One session of the convention placed at the entrance
to the Labor Temple a large bronze tablet which bore the por-
trait of the Socialist leader. The inscription was plain but
memorable:
In Honor
of
Eugene V. Debs
April 1, 1925.
On this occasion Debs gave one of the last major speeches of
his career. The tribute given him had not blunted his hostility
or softened his rhetoric. The huge audience, which stood in a
burning sun throughout the two-hour address.heard little except
criticism of their trade-union policies. Stomping back and for-
ward as of old. Debs roared his indictment of pure-and-simple
unionism. His arm and forefinger slashing the air like a scimitar,
he hurled crashing epigrams into the crowd before him: "The
capitalist politician tells you how intelligent you are to keep you
ignorant. I tell you how ignorant you are to make you desire to
be intelligent."
The kernel of this speech offered a telling measure of the fore-
sight of u g ~ n e Debs. "This world respects as it is compelled to
respect," he declared. "Develop your own capacity for clear
thinking. Unorganized, you are helpless, you are held in con-
tempt. Power comes through unity. Organization or stagnation,
which will you take? The labor movement must either go for-
WORLD SOCIALISM 451
ward or backward. Merge your craft unions!" Although this
exhortation had remained unchanged since the Pullman boy-
cott, it was perfectly appropriate in 1925. The craft unions
were still divided by narrow policies and jurisdictional disputes.
Injunctions and military intervention were still being used to
break strikes. The mass production industries had never been
organized. The postwar depressiQn had given way to an eco-
nomic boom, and the trade unions uneasily succumbed to a
belief in constant prosperity. Schemes based on the co-operation
of workers and employers were adopted in scores of industries.
In opposition to these plans for class conciliation, the Socialist
leader offered industrial unionism and stalwart battle against
the employers.
However modern Debs' ideas, his mannerisms bore the im-
print of an earlier age. The United States had entered the epoch
of speakeasies, of short skirts, of cynicism and sexual excesses,
of naturalism in the novel and optimism in the stock exchange.
But in language, in dress, in artistic judgment and human val-
ues, Eugene Debs was yet the chivalrous Victorian. A jesting
but considered estimate of the elderly Debs was given in 1946
by a Michigan newspaperman: ''St. Eugene Victor was of
another . world, untainted by the jagged crassness of the era
that followed World War I and continued to sour and fester
until pregnant women must stand in buses and no man has a
friend. He did kia8 babies. Honest tears rolled down his face when
he talked of Little Nell. With his head he never understood
Marx, but with his heart h.e instinctively felt the answers that
the Great Karl pondered and labored and buried in verbiage
and statistics."
Soon after his speech to the Indiana Federation of Labor Debs
began a lecture tour of the East. The tour carried him to Boston,
the national center of the campaign to win a new trial for Sacco
and Vanzetti. The defense committee had found it difficult to
break into the metropolitan newspapers, and they viewed the
arrival of Eugene Debs as a certain solution to this problem.
They proposed that Debs visit Vanzetti in Charlestown prison,
only a few miles from Boston. The resulting story, warm with
parallels and human interest, would bid for front pages from
THE BENDING CROSS
coast to coast. Although Debs was eager to comply, his lecture
managers flatly rejected the proposal. They contended that he
was touring for the Socialist Party and his health required spe-
cial care. So the projected visit was abandoned. But Debs told
the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee to issue any statement
at all over his signature, the more emphatic the ~ t t e r
In New York City Debs finally broke through the restrictions
placed upon him by his managers. His lPain speech was sched-
uled for Hunt's Point Palace in the Bronx. August Claessens,
in charge of the meeting, was worried by the memory of Debs'
occasional drinking sprees. To guard against this problem he
appointed two reliable teetotalers to keep watch over the fea-
tured speaker. As soon as Claessens departed from the three
men, Debs turned on all of his eloquence. With masterful candor
he stated the predicament: "Now look, comrades, there's an
old Indiana miner who runs a tavern up on IUth Street. He's
there all alone, just phoned me that he won't be able to get
down for the meeting, and asked me to come up and see him.
We've enough time before the meeting, so why don't we all go
up there just for a little while?" The two watchdogs were re-
luctant. But they were confident of their ability to control
Debs, so they agreed.
August Claessens, later that evening, presided over the meet-
ing at Hunt's Point Palace. The hour arrived for the main
speech, but Debs was not present. For forty-five minutes
Claessens stood on the speaker's stand and told stories. He
peered expectantly toward the entrance. He fussed and fidgeted
and held whispered consultations with ushers. The audience
became increasingly restive. Feet began to stamp in different
parts of the hall. Hands started to clap. Somebody shouted for
Debs and the crY spread. Claessens, excitable, agitated. be-
came desperate.
Suddenly there was a tremendous uproar in the rear of the
hall Through a rift in the crowd Claessens could see Debs and
the escort. The lanky Socialist leader and one of the watchdogs
were dragging between them the limp body of the second, whose
feet trailed loosely across the floor. He was completely drunk.
Debs was not entirely sober. Claessens hurried down to the
WORLD SOCIALISM
scene of the disturbance, blasted his small body th:rough the
crowd, and found several ushers to carry the culprits to the
platform. Debs, even more affectionate at such moments, took
a half-hour to reach the stage. Claessens thought that he would
stop to kiss each member of the audience. But at length they
reached the stage, and two cups of black coffee had some effect.
Debs opened his speech with a florid discussion of the glories
of autumn, the delightful life of the birds and the bees, the pure
pleasure of belonging to the human race. The audience loved it.
Most witnesses did not even notice one of the most ludicrous
errors he ever made. His speeches were customarily organized
into several sections, so that the length and meaning could be
adjusted by inserting and deleting sections. qn. this memorable
night, Eugene Debs repeated one entire section. His ability to
escape detection in such a blunder proved to Algernon Lee that
the crowd actually was hypnotized.
A few days later the Socialist Party in New York gave a ban-
quet for Debs on his seventieth birthday. Dozens of men who
had rejected the Party and all its activities felt themselves
drawn to the banquet by their respect and affection for the guest
of honor. Bitter enemies sat elbow to elbow in apparent friend-
ship and good cheer. The banquet hall was aflame with gossip
and speculation'" at the sight of so many forgotten faces. Mter
the festivities Louis Boudin, an attorney who had resigned in
1919, was cornered in a cloakroom by Victor Berger. The portly
Berger edged over to the slight frame of Boudin. "Well," he
inquired, "are you coming back to the Party?" Boudin was
greatly amused. "No, I just came to see Debs," he laughingly
replied.
Apart from the general reorganization of the Socialist Party,
Debs' lectures in 1925 aimed to promote funds and enthusiasm
for a new weekly newspaper. The first number of the American
Appeal was released on January 2, 1926. Eugene V. Debs, as
editor in chief and regular columnist, wrote a fiery appeal for
the striking anthracite miners, a plea for Sacco and Vanzetti.
His vaunted militance was revived in his attacks on the Treaty
of Versailles: "The word of the imperial masters is not good.
Their treaties are worthless. They lie to each other and they
lie to the world to perpetuate their own vicious and debasing
misrule. Down with capitalism, imperialism and militarism."
Each day seemed to bring new justification for his opposition
to the World War. When the Disabled American Veterans
charged that soldiers who died in the Federal hospitals were
buried without so much as a headstone to mark their graves,
Debs commented that he had long known "the postwar value
of human cannon fodder." Taft and Coolidge he denounced as
pious hypocrites who plundered the Unknown Soldier during his
life and honored him after his death. The measure of their
cerity, he declared, lay in their fawning upon the bloody
torships of Admiral Horthy and Benito Mussolini concurrently
with the deni!}1 of recognition to "the working class government
established by Soviet Russia."
The career of Eugene Debs was endingw here it had begun, in
the editorial office of a labor publication. He was again back in
the fray, doing battle for his chosen cause. His biting
ments carried the joy of conviction, the pure love of combat. But
this frenzied activity was doomed to short life. The health of
Kate Debs had suffered a serious relapse. She too was growing
old and worn. The years of her husband's exile in Atlanta had
been a prolonged trial. In Christmas week of 1925 one of her
sisters was killed by a bus in Terre Haute, with shattering effects
on Kate's nerves. Late in March Debs abandoned his work on
the American Appeal so that" his wife could convalesCe in
muda.
In his entire life the Socialist leader had never journeyed be-
yond the continent of North America. He had contemplated a
trip to Europe in 1900 to study economic conditions and the
socialist movement, but the Presidential campaign of that year
had disrupted the plan. Again in 1907 he had spoken of
ing socialism "around the world, spending at least a year in
foreign countries," only to rediscover that the United States
afforded ample thrills, fights, and novelty. Now his maiden
voyage was made under trying conditions. He was unable to
secure a passport because his citizenship was open to doubt.
and it seemed possible that he would be denied entrance on his
return to El1is Island. Aliens usually gained readmittance by
WORLD SOCIALISM
swearing fidelity to the Federal Constitution, but Debs con-
sidered this pledge a confession that he had erred in 1918. He
had resolved never to humble himself in this way.
These worries about Kate's health and his own citizenship
were complicated by the Federal officials and the newspaper-
men. Although the reasons for the trip were common knowledge,
Debs was subjected to constant intrusions upon his privacy.
On the ship in New York harbor he was interviewed by a horde
of reporters and photographed by four different cameramen. Ar-
rived in Bermuda, he was promptly questioned by the immigra-
tion inspector and the chief of police, who asked about his past
occupation and future intentions. They departed after solemnly
reading aloud the laws providing for the deportation of unde-
sirable aliens. In spite of these annoyances the journey was
effective. Five weeks of rest and tropical sunshine proved an
effective healing agent, and they left for New York much im-
proved in health. Debs gave only one brief statement about the
trip: "Bermuda is a fine place, bu t I'm glad to be back in Amer-
ica."
The salutary results of the vacation were largely offset by
the return voyage, when a rough sea caused extreme seasick-
ness. Now illness followed illness. Death lurked in every twi-
light. The end was drawing ever'more near. When Kate and
Eugene Debs arrived in Terre Haute they found both Theodore
and his wife were seriously ill, their home in tl;te care of a doctor.
Faced with this added worry, Debs himself became sick. His
strength fell rapidly. He had hoped to attend the Socialist na-
tional convention in Pittsburgh on May 1, but he was unable to
leave his home. When the Indiana convention of the Party be-
gan in late- May he was confined to his bed. The other three
convalescents soon recovered, but Debs' vitality continued to
wane. Writing to a friend on July 7, Theodore said of his brother:
"He has had a prolonged siege and has suffered all the tortures
of the damned. It would seem as if all the devils in and out of hell
had conspired, by the most refined process, to torture the last
breath out of his already weakened body." But even in this
miserable condition Debs played an active rBle in the campaign
to save Sacco and Vanzetti, "these two honest, clean-hearted-
brothers of ours!' His appeal for the two Italian immigrants
was written for the Labor Defense Council that had provided
the basis for his denunciation of the Communists fifteen months
earlier, indicating that the denunciation was far from con
elusive.
Debs also summoned up the energy to make one nal ven
ture through the streets of Terre Haute. Friends who knew of
his critical illness were astonished to see him enter the City Hall
He had known five years of torture because of the doubts about
his citizenship. The yearning toward his rootholds ran too deep
to allow a casual acceptance of this aJienation from the only
land he had ever known. He finally had resolved to bring the
test case suggested by Morris Hillquit. His errand at the City
Hall was easily performed; he merely registered to vote in the
November election.
Never again was the gaunt, tidy gure of Eugene Debs seen
strolling about his home community. On September he was
taken to Lindlahr Sanitarium for another nature cure. It was a
beautiful autumn in northern Illinois. The geese passed over-
head in solid formation, etched sharply against the curtain of
blue that fell behind the horizon. The air seemed washed and
purified. In this weather Debs again became cheerful and hearty.
The danger had passed. On October 6 he was bundled up and
taken for a short drive in an automobile. That night he suffered
a painful attack of rheumatism, which lasted four days. It
drained his last shallow reservoir of strength.
Nothing, however, seemed able to break his spirit. One day
he recited to a fellow patient William Ernest Henley's "In
victus." The friend promptly asked him for a copy. Turning to
his wife Kate, Debs asked for paper and pencil. The pad was
propped against his knees as he scrawled in a shaky hand:
It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the SCTOa,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Less than a week later, on October 15, 1926, he lapsed into a
coma following a heart attack. For the next five days Kate and
WORLD SOCIALISM
Theodore Debs kept unbroken vigil by his bedside. Not once
did he open his eyes, speak, smile. There was no sign of life
save the muted sound of his breathing. Then there was no sign
of life at all.
[ 4 ]
THE WIDOW received hundreds of letters of condolence from
personal friends and prominent men. "I never knew a man whom
I loved more than I did him," wrote Clarep.ce Darrow. "N 0 e t ~
ter kindlier man ever lived than Gene. I shall miss him as I
have missed few others." It was generally agreed that Eugene
Debs would not be forgotten. Edgar Lee Masters honored him
as "one of those Americans-too few-who by the purity and
strength of his character, add to the real virtues of the nation as
living influences, and as memory for posterity to contemplate."
Sinclair Lewis struck the same note: "There is scarce a day
when I do not speak of him .. To talk of 'how great a loss
he is' is vain, because he is not lost, but eternally here, a beacon
in a world where we might otherwise be lost in darkness."
But these individual letters were insignificant beside the
popular outpouring of grief. Memorial meetings were held in
every large city and in a thousand hamlets. Eight thousand
persons crowded into Chicago's Ashland Auditorium, and the
local Joint Board of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers i s ~
sued black lapel ribbons:
In Memoriam
Our Friend
and Comrade
Eugene V. Debs
In New York massed battalions of mourners paraded through
a chill October rain. The Record in distant Los Angeles spoke its
simple homage: "All that was mortal of lovable Gene Debs
slips back this week into the quiet, cool earth for its long rest.
And in the homes of thousands of the world's common folk there
. "
18 sorrow.
In Terre Haute the president of the Central Labor Union
called upon Theodore Debs. His statement was above challenge:
"You will have to give him to us for a while, Theodore. You
know he belongs to us." For two days the body lay in state at
the Labor Temple. The funeral was held on Saturday, October
28, on the front lawn of the family home. At 6:80 P.M., when the
warm day had become a dark and somber evening, the coffin
was sent to Indianapolis, where the doors of the mortuary stood
open for an hour. At the Labor Temple, at the funeral, in In-
dianapolis, the patterns of grief were tinted by the'hues of dedi-
cation. Delegations arrived from New York, from Chicago,
from Pittsburgh and Omaha, from countless villages once visited
by Eugene Debs. Men walked past the coffin with lowered heads
and fever-brightened eyes, in sanctification of the past and bib-
ute to the future.
Few Americans stood apart from the national sorrow at the
death of Eugene Debs. The audience at his funeral included
famous writers, wealthy attorneys and businessmen, ordinary
men with the grease of a lifetime ground into their thumbnails.
Each of these mourners created an idol in his own image. Some
found in Eugene Debs a misguided zealot who nonetheless was
sincere and charitable. Others admired the Socialist leader be-
cause of his pioneer work for woman suffrage, social security
legislation, industrial unionism, the extension of civil liberties.
So it became fashionable to minimize his radical beliefs in
favor of his purity of character. On this count he was deemed
above reproach. But much of the acclaim was viewed with
suspicion by certain critics. Was it possible, after all, to sever
each connection between a motives and his policies?
The very universality of the applause drew an. acid comment
from Heywood Broun: "Eugene V. Debs is dead and every-
body says he was a good man. He was no better and no worse
when he served a sentence at Atlanta."
Surely Debs deserved little credit for whatever was worthy
about his motives. He never doubted his moral responsibility
for the welfare of his brother, having absorbed as a child his
unqualified answer. The identification of his brothers, the quest
for policies which would promote their common welfare-these
were the critical problems for Eugene Debs. From his observa-
WORLD SOCIALISM 459
tions of American life he arrived at a specific solution. His con-
clusion held that the common people were being crucified by
an outmoded economic system. On the accuracy of that belief
must rest the ultimate worth of his career. The admonition to
love one another, which dominated his early thinking, he char-
acterized in 1919 as "a harmless doctrine." He had come to
believe that devotion to the oppressed must be shown by re-
sistance to the oppressors. This contention that modern society
holds two social classes, two conflicting interests, lay at the root
of his entire program.
The process of change from Christian to 1\f&rxist was never
completed by Eugene Debs, and it cast up grave inconsistencies
in his temperament. While some of his talents flourished, others
were static, still others atrophied. His gifts as an agitator and
his feeling for social realities were matched by a gross ignorance
of science, literature, all fields of scholarship. His activities were
rife with contradictions. with petty foibles, with mistakes both
minor and serious. But it is difficult to speak with confidence
of the faults of Eugene Debs. His popularity was much be-
holden to the periodic drinking sprees, to the coarse and indis-
criminate humor, the unthinking chivalry where women were
involved, the devotion to friends who became political enemies.
In all of these qualities he was more Midwestern than a worn
and rotting plow-handle buried deep in the soil of a :Kansas
farm.
Hence the story of Eugene Debs becomes the story of a whole
generation of wage earners and dirt farmers. While these people
learned something from the Socialist leader, he learned even
more from them. His awesome strength in time of crisis was
made possible by his confidence in his fellows. At such moments
his finite self seemed to merge with the agonized wanderings
of the nameless multitude. Out of these popular yearnings and
struggles the mind of Eugene Debs fashioned a supreme maxim:
Human happiness is never found by a solitary search. No man
rises far above the ranks.
SELECTED CHAPTER SOURCES
It is neither expected nor intended that the following notes
should serve as a substitute for footnotes, which are reluctantly
omitted for reasons of space and readability. The procedure
here has been to give the general source or sources for each chap-
ter; no further citation is given for material located in the con-
temporary issues of these periodicals. Specific citations. are
given for quotations or important facts taken from other sources.
Short titles only have been used in this section; the long titles
are given in the Bibliography.
CHAPTER I
Material for this chapter was furnished by Oscar Baur, :Fred Heinl,
Martin E. O'Connell, and two confidential sources.
The available data on Debs' childhood is both sparse and unreliable.
The best sources are the earlier. biographies by Stephen M. Reynolds,
4--6,58-59,73-74, and by McAlister Coleman, Talka With Debs
in Terre Haute, by David Karsner, 70-88, the Memorial
Volume for the Golden Wedding Anniversary of Marguerite and Jean
Daniel Debs (Fairbanks), and the Notes by Max Ehrmann.
Debs' article, "My First Job," is in the Appeal to Reason, October 1,
1910. The Terre Haute Express, September 14,1899, and the St. Louis
Chronicle, September 1, 1900, contain some history of the family, as
does John Reed's article in The Lwerator, September 1918. The quota-
tion about John Brown is in the Appeal to Reason, November 28, 1907.
For an illustration of the impact of Lea Mishables on Eugene Debs, see
his article, "Fantine in Our Day," International Socialist Review,
March 1916.
The incident in St. Louis involving Debs and the locomotive engineer
is from Arthur M. Lewis, The Art of The status of educa-
tion in Debs' outlook is illustrated by his articles in LocamotitJe Fire-
men's Magazine, October 1884, 614-15, and May 1890, 889; see also
Talks With Debs, 88. His superficial technicel knowledge is revealed
in his article, "The Education of Locomotive Engine-men," LocomotifJ8
Engineering, Janwuy and in the popular engineering works
issued by the Debs Publishing Company during the 1890's.
For backgrolmd material on Terre Haute I have consulted the Terre
Haute business directories, the standa.rd histories of Indiana and Vigo
County; Kenwortlly's biography of Daniel W. Voorhees; Foulke's
460
SOURCES 461
biography of Oliver Morton; a series of articles by A. R. Markle,
"When Terre Haute Was Young," (Ind Div); Charles RoIl. CoUmel
Dick Thompaon; Lyman Abbott, Reminiscences; John J. Schlicher,
"Terre Haute in 1850," Indiana Magaaine of History, 16:
Carl F. Brand, ''History of the Know-Nothing Party in Indiana,"
Indiana Magaaine dj History, 18: The contemporary Terre
Haute newspapers are rich in background material but extremely arid
in relation to the Debs family.
The final quotation in the chapter is from Debs' article in the New
York Comrade, June 1904.
CHAPTER II
For infonnation used in this chapter I am indebted to Oscar Baur,
Fred Heinl, A. R. Maxkle, Martin E. O'Connell, Peter Witt, and the
same two confidential informants (chapter I, above).
The indispensable sources for the entire period 1875-1894, chapters
IT-VllI in this work, are the files of The Magaaine and the Proceedings
of the BLF conventions (Rand). Useful material on the entire period
will also be found in Debs' speech to the BLF convention in 1894.
The story of Herrns.n Hulman is in Beckwith's History of Vigo
County, see also the speech by Debs, "Hulman & Co.," Terre
Haute Gazette, 1893. Debs' reactions to his job as billing
clerk are told in the Notes by Max Ehrmann; his subsequent statement
about business is from an interview with Floy R. Painter, August
quoted in That Man Debs, by Painter, 10.
Debs' recollections of his early experiences in the BLF are told in
American Railroader, September 1885; New York Comrade, April 1902,
(Reynolds, Debs, 79-84), and June 1904; National Rip-Saw, April 1914;
the speech to the BLF convention of 1894 mentioned above; and his
letter to the Locomotive Firemen's and Enginemen's Magaaine, Janu-
ary 191f<!, 117. These reminiscences by Debs, in common with most
terial of this sort, contain numerous errors and must be used with cau-
tion.
Volume IT of The History of Lahor in the United States, by John R.
Commons and Associates, is still the best survey of the labor movement
from 1880 to 1894. The generalizations of the Commons group of
historians are expertly presented in The Theory of the Lahor MODe'I1UmJ"
by Selig Perlman. Philip S .. Foner is now at work on the second volume
of his History of the Lah01" Movement, which will begin with the forma-
tion of the AFL in 1881. An excellent account of the railroad strike of
1877 is in Samuel-Yellen's American Labor Struggles, chapter 1; its
THE BENDING CROSS
effects on the BLF are told in Debs' pamphlet, The American M0fJ8-
ment (Reynolds, Debs. 108--105).
For Debs' memory of the Patrick Hemy speech see Debs Scrapbooks.
VI, W5 (Rand). Another version. by Phil K. Reinbold. is in Debs Mss
(Fairbanks). Debs wrote about Susan R Anthony in the Socialist
Woman, January 1909. and in Pearsoo's. July 1917; about Robert G.
Ingersoll in American Journal of Politics. Pearsoo's, March
1917, and Karsner. Talks With Debs. 98-101; about James Whit-
comb Riley in Pearsoo's, April 1917. and NaJ:wnal Magazine. January
1914; about Wendell Phillips in Pearsoo's. May 1917.
Debs discusses Tom Harper in Karsner, Talks With Debs, 180-1;
his leniency toward prostitutes is described by Tom Hickey, Debs
Scrapbooks, IX, (Rand). The clash with the Pennsylvania Railroad
official is told in Coleman. Debs. 68--66; a slightly different account was
told to me by Peter Witt.
The statement by Marguerite Debs about her oldest son is in the
reminiscences of Theodore Debs, Chicago Sun, January 24, 1948.
CHAPTER III
In this chapter I have used material furnished by Oscar Bauc, Mrs.
CarabelleG.Dickey. Ed Evinger. MartinE. O'Connell. Mrs. Raymond
P. Harris. Helen RosS. and the same two confidential informants
(chapter :r. above).
The biography of John J. Baur is in Beckwith, History of Vigo
County. 817. Most of the other information about the Baur family and
Kate Metzel wasfunlliilied by the persons listed above, but a few facts
were taken from newspaper and magazine articles which will be listed
in the sources for subsequent chapters. The volume of The Magazine
inscribed by Eugene De bs to Kate Metzel is in Debs Collection (Rand).
Lewis Lorwin's history of the American Federation of Labor and
Commons' History, II, should be consulted. but the best source of in-
formation on the AFL in this period is Saniuel Gompers' autobi-
ography, Seventy Years of Life and Labor. Debs' failure to attenq the
1881 conference in Terre Haute was revealed to me by Ed Evinger, a
Terre Haute printer who was present at this meeting. The debt of the
local trade unions to Eugene Debs in these early days was told to me
by Mr. Evinger; see also the statements by Phil K. Reinbold and J. P.
McDonagh in Eugene V. Debs: What His Neighbors Say About Him.
Debs recalls his relations with the other Brotherhoods in the SVJitch-
men's Journal, August, September, 1906; in the Appeal to Reason.
February 8, 1906; and in a press release written in (lnd Div),
SOURCES 468
Some campaign material from the 1885 election is in Debs Collection
(Shannon). The official record of the Indiana legislature is Drapier's
LegislatifJ8 &porta, 1885. Debs' comment to Theodore on his return
from Indianapolis after the session adjourned is in Coleman, Debs, 85.
The wedding is described in the Terre Haute Gazette, June 9, 1885;
and in TIw Magazine, July 1885. The reception following the hQney-
moon is reported in TIw Magazine, August 1885. Debs' comment to
Kate on their financial status was reported to me by Helen Ross, while
I am indebted to Mrs. Raymond P. Harris for the version of the inci-
dent involving Kate Debs, her errant husband, and James Whitcomb
Riley.
The strife between the Knights of Labor and the AFL is best fol-
lowed in Gompers' autobiography; Terence V. Powderly, The Path
I Trod,' and Joseph R. Buchanan, TIw Story of a Labor Agitator. Sev-
eral dozen letters casting light on the subject are in Joseph A. Labadie's
correspondence (Labadie). There is no adequate history of the Knights
of Labor; a useful account is Carroll D. Wright, "Historical Sketch of
the Knights of Labor," Quarterly Journal of Ecanomics, January 1887,
187-68.
The Haymarket affair is described fully in Henry David's work on
the subject; the best brief account is Yellen's American Labor Struggles,
chapter Harry Barnard's biography of Altgeld, Eagle Forgotten,
contains a careful analysis of the bombing and the trial. The theory here
given about the reasons for Debs' silence is original with me; while it
seems to fit the available facts, it must be counted as speculation.
Debs' subsequent article about the Haymarket martyrs is in The New
Time, February 1898 (Reynolds, Debs,
The conversation between Debs and Joseph R. Buchanan during the
Burlington strike is taken from Buchana.n, Story, 806-10. P. M.
Arthur's fea.rof an injunction is criticized by Debs in TIw American
Movement and in the Social Demoeratic Herald, August 1908.
The speech by Debs in behalf of Grover Cleveland is reported in the
Terre Haute Weekly Gazette, November 1, 1888.
eRA PTE R I V
Material for this chapter was furnished by Mrs. Carabelle G. Dickey,
Mrs. Raymond P. Harris, Helen Ross, and Dr. and Mrs. John R.
Shannon.
The sterility of Mrs. Kate Debs was revealed to me by Mrs. Ray-
mond P. Harris and Helen Ross, both of whom heard the' story from
Mrs. Arthur Baur.
THE BENDING CROSS
Dr. and Mrs. John R. Shannon, the owners of the former Debs'
home at 451 North Eighth Street, Terre Haute, showed me through
the house and told me its history. The abstract of the lot and several
bills from the original construction are in their possession. Newspaper
clippings about the house are in Debs Scrapbooks, I, (Rand).
The anecdotes about James Whitcomb Riley are in National Mat/a,.
zille, January 1914. R.iley's letter to Edgar Wilson Nye is taken from
The Letters of James Whitcomb Riley, edited by William Lyon Phelps,
104. The other facts about Debs' personal life at this time are gleaned
from Kate Debs Scrapbooks (Shannon); Debs Scrapbooks and his
library (Rand); Kate Debs' interview with the Chicago reporters on
July 1894 (clippings in Debs Scrapbooks. L Rand); Karsner,
Talks With Debs, !to.
The story of the federation movement and the Supreme Council has
never before been told, either by labor historians or by the previous
biographers of Eugene Debs. It has been reconstructed from the files
of The Magcmine; the Proceedings of the BLF conventions of 1890 and
and the minutes of the sessions of the Supreme Council, which
are contained in a single bound volume in Debs Collection (Rand).
The clipping from Terre Haute Gautte about Debs' proposed resig-
nation from the BLF is in Kate Debs Scrapbook (Shannon); Deb&"
statement is in The Magazine, January 1891.
Debs referred to Gronlund's The Cooperative Commonwealth on
numerous occasions; see for instance his testimony to the United States
Strike Commission of 1894, Report, 170, and Reynolds, Debs, 88. The
review of Looking Backward is in The M agcmine, February 1890.
The quoted letter from Gompers to Debs, November 1891, is in
Samuel Gompers Copy-Book No.6, 460-2. Debs' respect for Gompers
at this time appears in numerous articles in The Magazine; see, for
instance, December 1891, 1102.
That the disruption of the Supreme Council in 1891 was a critical
incident for Eugene Debs is apparent, not merely from his actions at
the time, but from his later references to the event; see, for instance,
his testimony to the United States Strike CommmioIi. of 1894; his
speech to the BLF convention of 1894; and his articles in Switchmen's
Journal, August, September, 1906. .
CHAPTER V
The best secondary source on the Homestead strike is Sam uel Yellen,
American Labor Struggles, chapter 8; see also Allan Nevins, GrOfJ8r
Cleveland, Commons, History, II, 495-7. the Coeur
SOURCES
d'Alene strike see Commons, II, 497-8, and IV, 17O-S. For the 1892
Presidential campaign see any standard history; Nevins, Gr0fJe7
Cwveiand, Matthew Josephson, Ths Politicos, 1865-1896.
The exact sequence of events in the formation of the ARU is far
from clear. The account given here has been pieced together from
clippings in Debs Scrapbooks, I, 59 (Rand); John R. Commons, My-
sdJ, 149-50; ThsMagazine; Coleman, Debs. 108-6; United States Strike
Commission, Report, 5't-7.
An excellent account of the pardon of the Haymarket survivors is
given by Harry Barnard in Eagle Fargotten; see also Henry David.
History of the Ha!f11Wrlcet Affair.
The history of the ARU from its formation until the end of 1898 has
been taken from scattered sources: U. S. Strike Commission, Report,
11-18, 88, 142, 209-10, passim; Railway Times, January I, 1894;
Samuel Gompers, Sevemy Years, I, 404-7;. Nathan Fine, Labor and
Farmer Partiea in the United State a, 1828-1928, 187; the National Rip-
Saw, November 1921, and Debs' pamphlet, You Railroad Men. After
the establishment of the Railway Timea on January I, 1894, the story
can be followed easily.
The visit of James Whitcomb Riley to Terre Haute is taken from
the Terre Haute newspapers, November 1.8-15, 1898. The speech by
Eugene Debs at the Labor Congress in Chicago, August 80, 1894, is
reprinted in The Magmrine, October 1898, 876-9; Debs' prelimina.ry
correspondence with Lloyd is in IJoyd Mas.
The dispute on the Union Pacificcan be followed in The Magazine
and Railway Times; see also Record in Oliver Ames, Second, et. al. v.
Union Pacific Railroad Company, et al. (Rand). For the Great Northern
strike, in addition to the current issues of Railway Timea and the Min-
neapolis and St. Paul newspapers, the following sources are helpful:
posters in Kate Debs Collection (Shannon); Reynolds, Debs, 7-1!;
Appeal to Reaaon, September 29,1900, and July 9,1910. See also Debs'
speech to the BLF convention of 1894, and the Notes by Max Ehr-
mann.
CHAPTER VI
The best primary sources on the causes of the original dispute in the
town of Pullman are the testimony before the U. S. Strike Commission,
the conclusions of the Commission, and William H. Carwardine, Ths
PuUman Strike,' the sole account of this phase of the dispute which
does not condemn the company is George M. Pullman, The Strike at
PuUman (the statements of George M. Pullman and T. H. Wickes be-
466
THE BENDING CROSS
fore the U. S. Strike Commission}. The quotation about Pullman
houses and Pullman heDs is taken from John Lee, Ind:ustriaf, OrganiJsa-
tion, 20. Debs' first speech to the strikers in Pullman is from W. T.
Stead, Chicago Today, 177-8. The exhaustive secondary source is Al-
mont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike.
For the ARU convention see the 'Proceedings (Crerar Library, Chi-
cago), which unfortunately is not a verbatim transcript; Railway Times,
June 15 and June 1894; Commons, Myself, 150; the contemporary
Chicago newspapers; and the testimony of the ARU officials, Thomas
Heathcote, Jennie Curtis, and William H. Carwardine before the U. S.
Strike Commission.
CHAPTER VII
There is an enormous body of literature on the Pullman boycott.
For the most part the account given here has been taken from the fol-
lowing primary sources: U. S. Strike Commission, Report; Railway
Times; the contemporary Chicago, New York, Washington, D. C., and
Los Angeles newspapers; several magazines, including Harper's
Weekly, Leslie's, Public Opinion, The Nation; Samuel Gompers Copy-
Book No. 11; Henry Demarest Lloyd Mss; Grover Cleveland Mss;
Richard Olney Mss; Walter Q. Gresham Mss; John Peter Altgeld,
LWe Questions, 65H83, 92!l-987; Hazen S. Pingree, Facts and Opinions.
5-13; Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years, I, 409-10, 414. Striking for
life, by John Swinton, a pro-ARU account of the boycott, includes
several documents as well as articles by Debs, Gompers, and John
Hayes.
The comprehensive secondary source on the boycott is Almont
Lindsey, The Pullman Strike. Much material of value will be found in
the biographies of three leading participants: Allan Nevins, GrOfler
Cleveland; Harry Barnard, Eagle Forgotten (of Altgeld); Henry James,
The Life and Ptthlic of Richo:rd Olney. Nevins, while writing
fairly about the entire dispute, has centered his attention on the actions
and motives of the Administration; the analyses here given of the July 3
telegram from T. M. Milchrist to Richard Olney and the letter from
Olney to Edwin Walker, September are his work. Barnard
gives an excellent analysis of the Clevelan:d;;.Altgeld dispute. In addition
to publishing several important documents, James describes Olney's
indifference to the causes of the strike and his single-minded determina-
tion to restore order. My total debt to_these earlier historians is im-
mense .
. Grover Cleveland's subsequent justification of his course during
SOURCES
467
the Pullman boycott, given in a speech at Princeton University in
1904, w l ~ be found in his The GOfIemment in the Chicago Strike of 1894.
The criticism of this speech by Eugene Debs is printed in Reynolds.
Debs, 181-206.
The incident involving Eugene Field is told by Debs in NaI:i,onal
Magazine, Januar;r1914.
CHAPTER VIII
Debs' memories of Cook County Jail are told in his posthum9u8
Wal18 and Bars, fl7-29. The letter from Debs to Henry Demarest
Ltoyd, July fl4, 1894, is in Lloyd Mss; Samuel Gompers to Eugene
Debs, August 16, 1894; is in Samuel Gompers Copy-Book No. II, 268.
The letter from Debs to the BLF convention, September IS, 1894, is in
the Proceedings, 478-4; his speech is also in the Proceedings, 499-505.
This speech is a review of his entire career in the BLF and discusses
at length his disagreements with the organization. In my opinion it is
much more significant than his oft-quoted speech of resignation to the
1892 convention.
American Radicalism, 1865-1901, by Chester McA. Destler, con-
tains provocative a.naJysis of the labor-Populist alliance in lllinois.
Mr. Destler is now at work on a biography of Henry Demarest Lloyd.
Other useful material on the Congressional election of 1894 will be
found in Clarence Darrow, The StoT1J of M y Life; Joseph R. Buchanan,
The StoT1J of a Labor Agitator; Solon J. Buck, The Agrarian Crusade;
John D. Hicks, The Po'jYUlist Revolt; and the works by Barnard and
Nevins cited above.
Debs' manifesto of January 9, 1895, appears in Reynolds, Debs,
41. For the 1894 injunction see United States v. Debs et al. (64 Fed. 7fl4);
for the appeals see In r6 Debs (159 US 251) and In re Debs (158 US
564). On the appeal to the Supreme Court see also James, Olney, 57-8.
For the appeal on the conspiracy trial see Debs v. United States (78
Fed. 1021). The conspiracy trial is best followed in the Chicago news-
papers; a large body of material on the trial is brought together in
Reynolds, Debs, 28-40.
CHAPTER IX
From May until November, 1895, Railway Times and all the Chicago
newspapers con tain frequent articles about the prisoners in Woodstock
Jail; see especially Chicago Journal, July 29, 1895; Chicago Times,
August 22, 1895; Chicago Chronicle, November 23, 1895. Large col-
lections of newspaper clippings are in Debs Scrapbooks, I, 19f1-8.
468
THE BENDING CROSS
197,206, 289, 288 (Rand); Eugene V. Debs Mss (Labadie); Kate Debs
Collection (Shannon). Debs describes Sheriff George Eckert in Talks
With DdJs, 216.
For Debs' correspondence during his incarceration see The Letters
of James Whitcomb Riley, 200-1; Peter Witt Mss; Henry Demarest
Lloyd M ss; Samuel Gompers Copy-Book No. 12, 291; George A. Schil-
ling M ss. The material about Eugene Field is again taken from Na-
tional Magaaine, January 1914. Field's testimonial for Eugene Debs
is taken from a clipping in Debs Scrapbooks, IV, 215 (Rand).
The visit of Keir Hardie to Woodstock is described by Debs in
Railway Times, September 15, 1895, and in a letter from Thomas J.
Morgan to Henry Demarest Lloyd, September 6, 1895, Lloyd Mss.
For Debs' description of the visit by Victor L. Berger see Reynolds,
Debs, 84.
The ARU song is taken from Carl Sandburg, American Songbag, 190.
The conversation between Debs and Thaddeus Moore was told to me
by A. G. Slemons. The tribulations of Eugene Debs after his release
from Woodstock can be followed in Railway Times; Coleman, Debs,
176-8; and New York Comrade, June 1904.
The estimate here given of the significance of the Pu11m.a.n strike
is original with me, at least as to its emphases and formulations. The
final quotation is taken from a pamphlet by John Swinton, 1860-
Linooln; Debs-1895.
9HAPTER X
Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Heath, Louis Lazarus, Mrs. Seymour Sted.
man, and Harry F. Ward furnished material for this chapter. :
For the Populist convention of 1896 see Henry Demarest Lloyd's
article in Review of Remews, September 1896; Caro Lloyd, Henry
Demarest Lloyd, 25.9; Debs Scrapbooks, II, SO, 87, 52-4 (Rand); Eugene
V. pebs to Henry Demarest Lloyd, July 21, July 25,1896, Lloyd Mss.
Debs' activities in the campaign have been followed in Railway Times;
see also Thomas I. Kidd to Henry D. Lloyd, April 9, 1896, Lloyd Mss;
Painter, Debs, 80 II; Karsner, Debs, 68.
For the story of the campaign I have leaned heavily on the cited
works by Nevins and Barnard; Paxton Hibben's biography of William
Jennings Brya.n; James Peterson, ''The Tr.ade Unions a.nd the Populist
Party," Science and Society, Spring 1944. Useful material is in Robert
G. Ingersoll Mss, and George A. Schilling M ss.
Debs describes his conversion to socialism in New York Comrade,
April 1902, but this article gives the false impression that he became a
SOURCES 469
socialist during the Pullman boycott, or at the very latest by the time
of his release from Woodstock. For the story of Debs' equivocation
during 1895 and 1896, see Thomas J. Morgan to Henry Demarest
Lloyd, July 18, 1901, Lloyd M ss; this letter is very important for its
critical view of Debs' activities from 1895 to 1900. Debs himself gives
a more accurate account of his conversion to socialism, Appeal to
Reascm, September 5, 1908.
For Samuel Gompers' version of the Leadville strike, see Seventy
Years, I, 421-2; Debs gives a conflicting account in the New York
Comrade, November 1908, and in Karsner, Debs, 69-70.
The founding convention of the Social Democracy has been re-
constructed from the Social Democrat and the Chicago newspapers.
For the expressions of opinion about the Brotherhood of the Coopera-
tive Commonwealth and the Social Democracy, see Railway Times;
Debs Scrapbooks, II, 106 (Rand); Detroit Free Press, June 20, 1897;
Barney Berlyn to Daniel DeLeon, January 1, January 6, 1897, DeLeon
Msa; Victor L. Berger to Henry D. Lloyd, January 11, 1897; Isaac
Hourwich to Henry D. Lloyd, June 28, 1897; Lloyd to Hourwich,
July ~ 1 1897, all in Lloyd Mss.
The best source on Debs' rOle in the bituminous coal strike of 1897
is the collection of cJippings in Debs Scrapbooks, IT, U l ~ (Rand).
The Social Denwcrat is the title of the Railway Times after June
1897. A year later the title was again changed to the 'Social Democratic
Herald. This organ and the Appeal to Reason carry extensive reports of
Debs' activities during the final years of the century. Debs' speech to
the Nineteenth Century Club, March 21, 1899, is reprinted in Walls
and Bars, 194-212.
The convention of the Social Democracy, June 1898, can be fol-
lowed in the Chicago newspapers; the Social Democratic Herald; Emma
Goldman, LWing My Life, I, 220-1; Debs Scrapbooks, IT, 251-5
(Rand). The early trials of the Social Democrats are told by Coleman.
Debs, 201 ft, and were further told to me by Mrs. Seymour Stedman
and Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Heath. The letter from Debs to Julius A.
Wayland is reprinted by Wayland. Leaves of Life, 88.
The closing examples of Debs' political views are taken from the
Appeal; the Herald; Debs Scrapbooks, IT, 251, and TIl, 288 (Rand):
Kate Debs Scrapbooks (Sha.nnon). The letter from Debs to John D.
Rockefeller, June 19, 1897, was discovered by Louis Lazarus in a Yid-
dish translation in Dr. I. A. Hourwich, Selected Writings, IV, 101-8
(Yiddish). I am also inde bted to Mr. Lazarus for rendering this Yiddish
version into the English form given here. The letter is explicitly men-
tioned in Bill HaywoOffa Book, 95, and it seems typical of Debs' gen-
eral thinking at this time.
CHAPTER XI
Material for this chapter was furnished by Oscar Baur, Robert F.
Baur, Mrs. Annette Baur Calder, August Claessens, Mrs. Carabelle G.
Dickey, Mrs. Edith L. Drake, Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Heath, Fred
Heinl, G. A. Hoehn, Algernon Lee, Mrs. Cecelia Baur Martin, James
Oneal, John Panzner, John C. Prechtel, Helen Ross, Mrs. Clarence
Royse, Mrs. Seymour Stedman, Mrs. Frank Casper Wagner, John M.
Work, Dr. and Mrs. J. Rudolph Yung.
The political views of Debs' relatives at this time were described for
me by Oscar Baur, Robert F. Baur, Mrs. Carabelle G. Dickey, and
Fred Heinl. The rumor that Kate Debs fainted when her husband an-
nounced his conversion to socialism was reported to me by August
Claessens and James Oneal, but it is seriously questioned by several
relatives and other residents of Terre Haute. One relative for instance,
who is quite critical of Kate Debs, told me that Kate was "not the
fainting type." Debs' dislike for ba.nks and his private arrangement
with Arthur Baur were reported to me by Robert F. Baur and Helen
Ross. Several friends of Jessica and Stephen Reynolds furnished me
with information about their personalities and the Co-operative Dinner
Club-Mrs. Carabelle G. Dickey, Mrs. Edith L.Drake, Helen Ross,
Mrs. Clarence Royse, Mrs. Frank Casper Wagner, Dr. and Mrs. J.
Rudolph Yung. For Debs' correspondence during this period see Henry
Demarest Lloyd Maa; Frederic Heath Maa; James Whitcomb Riley
Maa; Debs Mss (Yale); Debs Maa (Shannon); Robert G. Ingersoll
Mas.
The early history of the Social Democratic Party may be followed
in Social Democratic Herald; Appeal to Reason; and Clevela.nd (Jitisen.
I also discussed this period with Frederic Heath, G. A. Hoehn, Algernon
Lee, and John M. Work. There is no official transcript of the proceed-
ings of the Social Democratic convention of 1900; a useful collection
of clippings is in Debs Scrapbooks, IV, 234-40 (Rand). The best
secondary sources are Nathan Fine, Labor and Farmer Parties, chapter
7; and Howard H. Quint's survey of the socialist movement up to the
Unity Convention of 1901 (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Johns Hopkins,
1947). I am indebted to Mr. Quint and to Chester MeA. DestIer for
their generous co-operation in connection with this section of my
manuscript.
SOURCES
471
A biography of Daniel DeLeon is now being prepared by Louis
Lazarus. Debs' vehement attack on DeLeon is contained in a letter
to Frederic Heath, December 26, 1899, Heath Mss. The post-election
dream of Eugene Debs in 1900 was told to me by Mrs. Edith L. Drake,
who lived with the Reynoldses at that time.
Bill Haywood's reaction to the Pullman boycott is described in his
autobiography, 53. For the party at the Imperial Hotel see the same
source, 95; some of the details were supplied to me by Covington Hall.
The anecdotes told by Debs appear in the Social Democratic Herald,
September 12, 1908. Samuel Gompers' account of the WFM convention
in 1902 appears in S8fJ81I.ty Years, I, 424.
For Mark Hanna's connection with the National Civic Federation
see Herbert Croly, Hanna, 886-410; for Gompers' view of the organiza-
tion see Sef)enty Years, I, 399, The dispute within the Socialist Party
about the formation of the American Labor Union is presented in the
International Socialist RetJiew, October, November, 1902. Until its
suppression in 1918, this left-wing organ carried most of the theol'etical,
as distinguished from agitational, articles written by Debs.
Debs' article on the labor press appeared in the Metal Worm, May
1904 (Reynolds, Debs, 289--42).
CHAPTER XII
Information for this chapter was supplied by Mrs. Carabelle G.
Dickey, Ed Eviriger,.Mrs. Raymond P. Harris, Frederic Heath, Al-
gernon Lee, Martin E. O'Connell, Winifred O'Connell, Shubert Sebree,
A. G. Slemons, and John M. Work.
Debs' letter to Joseph A. Labadie about the lecture business was
written December 12, 1905, Labadie M 8S. The meeting with Susan B.
Anthony is told by Debs in Pearson's, July 1917.
The material about Debs' personal life at this time was told to me
by the persons listed above; I have also taken a few statements from
Karsner, ToJks With Debs, 40, 105.
The organization of the local union of coal miners in Mackville was
told to me by A. G. Slemons. The part played by Debs in the Terre
Haute streetcar strike was related to me by Ed Evinger and Algernon
Lee. Coleman, Debs, 7 ~ 7 8 gives a somewhat different version of this
story, and he places the incident about 1882. Conversations with Ed
Evinger and A. G, Slemons, both leaders in the Terre Haute trade
unions at that time, convinced me that the incident really took place
during the winter of 1901-1902, when there was a hard-fought street-
472
THE BENDING CROSS
car strike in Terre Haute. An article by Eugene Debs about this strike
appears in the Terre Haute Toiler, February 7, 1902 (see clippings in
Debs Scrapbooks. V, 278-81, Rand).
For the sources of information about S. M. Reynolds and the Co-
operative. Dinner Club see the sources for chapter XI. The classes
conducted by Reynolds were described for me by Shubert Sebree. The
pOl."trait given here of Daniel Debs is taken from an article by George
Bicknell, Twen1ieth Century. August 1910; Terre Haute Tribune,
December 25, 1910 (see clipping in Debs Scrapbooks, 127, Rand).
Thebestsourceon the Socialist campaign of 1904 is A'JYP6al to Reason.
On Benjamin Hanford see the tribute paid to him by Eugene Debs,
Appeal to Reason, February 5, 1910. I also discussed Hanford with
Frederic Heath, Algernon Lee, and John M. Work. The attack on the
wealthy Socialist editor is made in a letter from Debs to Frederic
Heath, January 3, 1908, Heath Mss. The letter from Debs to his wife
is printed by Karsner, Talks With Debs, 113-14. Debs' boycott of
Pullman cars, and its untimely end, are described in National. Rip-Saw,
March 1915.
CHAPTER XIII
Frank Bohn, Louis B. Boudin, George D. Brewer, Solon DeLeon,
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Frederic Heath, Algernon Lee, Frank P.
O'Hare, Dr. John R. Shannon, Fred D. Warren, John M. Work, and
Dr. J. Rudolph Yung contributed material to this chapter.
The pamphlet, Unionism and Socialism, is reprinted in Reynolds,
Debs, 119-42. The turbulent situation in the labor and socialist move-
ments from 1904 to 1907 and the Moyer-Haywood campaign are best
followed in the American Federationist; Appeal to Reason; [1IierTuJtional.
Socialist Review; and Social Democratic Herald. The visit to Terre Haute
by Thomas J. Hagerty and William E. Trautmann was described for me
by Frank Bohn. For the developments culminating in the formation of
the IWW in June 1905, see Proceedings of the First Convention of the
Industrial Workers of the World. Bill Haywood's commentary on Deb's
and DeLeon is in Bill H aywooif s Book, 183-84. For the heated exchange
between Debs and Fred Heath, see Eugene Debs to Miss Elizabeth
Thomas, July 19, 1905, and a draft ofa letter from Heath to Debs, July
1905, no day, both in Heath M ss.
For the expressions of class solidarity by Debs, see Yott Railroad Men
(Reynolds, Debs, 207-U), and Debs to Joseph A. Labadie, December
12, 1905, Labadie M ss. The meeting in Grand Central Palitce, Decem-
ber 10, 1905. and Daniel DeLeon's subsequent comment about Debs.
SOURCES
478
were told to me by Solon DeLeon. Debs' defense of DeI.eon is in the
New York Worker, July ~ 1906, and his speech at Detroit's Turner
Hall is in the Detroit Tirn8, January 12, 1906. I have also discussed the
IWW of this period with Louis B. Boudin, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
Frederic Heath, Algernon Lee, and John M. Work.
The quotations from the Chicago TribuTUJ appear on February 20,
1906. The events following the arrival in Girard of Debs' article,
"Arouse, Ye Slaves!" are described by George Milburn, "The Appeal
to Reason:' American M ercU1"J/, July 1987, 865-6. Milburn's account
was corroborated by Fred D. Warren ina conversation with Ann Fagan
Ginger . .Aha see the pamphlet by Debs, An Inside V icw of the Appeal
to Reason.
Obituaries of Daniel Debs appear in the Terre Haute papers and the
Indianapolis News, about November 28, 1906. The statement by Debs
about his mother is taken from a clipping in Debs Maa (Labadie).
Debs' last testament appears in the Terre Haute Star, November 6,
1926.
For Debs' accession to the staff of the Appeal, see the contemporary
files of that paper and also Louis Kopelin, Life of Debs, 44. In addition
to the article by Milburn cited above, there are three brief discussions
of the Appeal to Reason: Stewart Holbrook, Lost Men of American
Hiatory, 818-7; W. J. Ghent, "The Appeal and Its Influence," Su11lC'lJ,
i6:24--8 (1911); and an unpublished essay by David A. Shannon, "The
Appeal to Reason:' The articles by Milburn and Holbrook tend toward
sensationalism and are not entirely reliable; Ghent briefly presents the
important facts and a usually sound interpretation; Shannon has done
a scholarly and often exciting job.
The incident involving Debs and Frank P. O'Hare was told to me
by Mr. O'Hare. Theodore Roosevelt's attacks on Debs are taken from
the Washington, D. C., Post, April 15, 1906, and Henry F. Pringle,
Tlieodore RooaefJeU, 452. Debs' replies are in Reynolds, Debs, 247-52,
i57-61; and New York World, April 25, 1907. Clarence Darrow de-
scribes his r61e in the Moyer-Haywoodtrial in TIw Story of M 11 Life,
127-56.
The statement by Debs in justification of his inflammaiory articles
was told to me by Dr. J. Rudolph Yung, and his comment, "If they
hang Haywood and Moyer, they'll have to hang me" appears in Walter
Hurt., EugeTUJ V. Debs, 38.
Since De bs did not iss ue any public s13 temen t on his departure from
the IWW, it is impossible to know with certainty either the exact time
or the reasons. As to the time, Dr. John R. Shannon saw Debs' dues
474
THE BENDING CROSS
card in the IWW for 1907, and his dues had been paid for that year.
Debs had not written for the IWW journals or agitated for the or-
ganization since 1906, when the syndicalist trend first became apparent.
My statement of the reasons for Debs' resignation is based on my
general understanding of his thought rather than on direct evidence,
but my general view was corroborated by Frank Bohn, George D.
Brewer, and Algernon Lee.
The best criticisms of dual-unionism by conservative unionists ap-
pear in the contempora.ry issues of the American Federationist. The
outstanding criticism by a radical unionist was made by William Z.
Foster in The Agitator (Home, Washington), April 15 to July 1, 1912.
A subseq uent and more extensive discussion by Foster will be found in
The Bankruptcy oj the American Labor Movement.
For Debs' views on reform movements and parties see his letter to
Henry Demarest Lloyd, June !l!l, 1908, Lloyd M ss; the Social De11W-
cratic HeraM, February U, 1899; Los Angeles Somal Dtmwcrat, July 81,
1916 (Debs Scrapbooks,. IX, 806, Rand).
The quotations given to illustrate Debs' views on the Negro problem
are taken from Social Democrat, January !lO, 1898; Indianapolis W CR'ld,
June !ZO, 1908: International Sociali8t RemerD, November 1908, January
1904. See also his letter to J. Milton Waldron of the Negroes' National
League, June so, 1908, printed in Karsner, Deb8, 19H; and his letter
of protest against the motion picture, "The Birth of a Nation," Terre
Haute Post, January 6, 1916.
CHAPTER XIV
Material for this chapter was contributed by William B. Bohn,
Frederic Heath, Frank P. O'Hare, Will Schuhardt, Dr. John R. Shan-
non, Alfred Wagenknecht, and John M. Work.
The best source for the Socialist campaign of 1908 is the Appeal to
Reason. That journal. on August 8, 1908, carries a schedule of the
principal Debs' meetings, and I have checked the accounts of many
speeches in the local newspapers of the various cities. Several clippings
are collected in Debs Scrapbooks, VITI, 168 fr. (Rand) and Kate Debs
Scrapbooks (Shannon). See also Karsner, Deba, 188-206; Painter, Debs,
98; Coleman, Debs, !l48-8. The excerpts from speeches to the Socialist
national convention are taken from the official Proceeding8; the letter
from Debs to Hanford is printed 151-i. The left-wing's fear of a con-
spiracy against the nomination of Debs was told to me by Frank P.
O'Hare; but three other participants in the convention-Frederic
SOURCES
475
Heath, Alfred WagenkneCht, and John M. Work-all say that they
know nothing about any plots toward this end.
Julius Wayland's estimate of Debs' oratory in 1898 appears in the
Appeal to Reascm, February 19, 1898; the statement by Art Young ap-
pears in Art Yaung: His Life and Ti11l.e8, 216. One of the best estimates
of Debs' rhetoric was told to me by William E. Bohn. For the speed!
in Girard, May 1908, see Reynolds, Debs, 478-91.
Most of the earlier writing about Debs falls in the category here
described as the Debs Legend; consult the Bibliography. Several "Ap-
preciations" of Debs are collected in Reynolds, Debs, 495-5}5. Hey-
wood Broun's column about Debs is reprinted in It Seems to Me, 1925-
1935.
The meeting of the Socialist National Committee at which J. Mahlon
Barnes proposed the Red Special was described for me by John M.
Work. The origin and methods of the Socialist in the
Southwest were explained to me by Frank P. O'Ha.re; and several of
these meetings are reported in the Appeal to Reason. See also Oscar
Ameringer, If You Don't Weaken, especially 267-8.
Steffens' article appears in Everybody's, October 1908; his private
expressions of opinion are taken from The of Lincoln Steffens,
I, 209-11; for Debs' letter to Steffens see ibid .. 208. The excerpt from
the letter by Theodore Roosevelt is in Pringle, op. cit., 418. For ex-
amples of the charges made against the Socialists, see the contemporary
American Chicago Record-Herald. August SO, 1908;
Detroit Free Press, September 28, 1908.
Theodore Debs disclosed his impostures during this campaign to Dr.
John R. Shannon, who passed them on to me. Debs' aversion to type-
writers is told by Louis Kopelin, Debs, 98. Descriptions of Debs' tour
of the East Side of New York appear in Morris Hillquit, Loose Leaves,
114-6; and Ernest Poole, The Bridge, 196. The anecdote about the
Pittsburgh reporter is taken from a clipping, Debs Mss (Labadie). The
final rally in Terre Haute was described for me by Will Schuhardt.
eH A,PTER XV
George D. Brewer, Mrs. Carabelle G. Dickey, Elizabeth Gurley
FlYnn,Mrs. Raymond P. Harris, AlgernoQ Lee, Frank P. O'Hare,
Helen Ross, Shubert Sebree, Fred D. Warren, and Noble C. Wilson
were interviewed in connection with this chapter.
The agitational articles by Debs in this period are taken from the
Appeal to Reason; his statements about the policy dispute within'the
Party appear in the International Socialist Ratnew.
476
THE BENDING CROSS
Debs' explanation of his refusal to leave Terre Haute is taken from a
clipping in Kate Debs Scrapbooks (Shannon). Most of the anecdotes
about his habits in Girard were told to Ann Fagan Ginger by Fred D.
Warren. The scrapbooks kept by Debs in Girard (Rand) and Henry
Vincent Scrapbooks (Labadie) are also valuable. The critical remarks
about Chicago are taken from an informal speech by Debs, reprinted
as An Evening in Girard. For his views on prohibition see Terre Haute
Tribune, March 1, 1908; and his letter to Charles R. Jones, May 24,
1912 (Shannon). The quoted article about Jesus was reprinted in Debs,
Labor and FreeJ.cm, 22-9; see also Christian Socialist, December 18,
1916. The anecdote about the Labor Day picnic in Terre Haute was
told to me by Algernon Lee; the childhood incident involving Eugene
and Theodore Debs is taken from a clipping in Debs Mss (Labadie).
For Debs' friendship with Horace Traubel and William F. Gable,
see their correspondence in Debs Mss (Yale); ;Debs' library (Rand),
which includes several books inscribed by Traubel and Gable; Talles
With Debs, 24, 4W. Debs' eulogy of Traubel appears in Karsner,
Trauhel, 100-1.
The chief source on the Fred Warren defense campaign is of course
the Appeal w Reason. Debs' costly hike up the Pennsylvania gully is
described in John Haynes Holmes, Debs, 12. The incident involving
Ella Reeve Bloor is taken from her autobiography, We Are Many, 52.
The eulogy of Jean Reynolds is contained in Eugene Debs to S. M.
Reynolds, January 24, 1910 (Shannon). For the incident near Brooklyn
Bridge, see Kopelin, Debs, 39; that involving Frank Roderus is taken
from a clipping in Debs Mss (Labadie). The argument between Debs
and Wayland is described in the Appeal to Reason, May 24, 1913.
For information about Kate Debs and Debs' home life in this period.
see George Bicknell, "Eugene V. Debs at Home," Twentieth Century,
August 1910; Socialist Woman, October 1908; Chicago Daily Socialist,
May 13, 1912; I also received several facts from Mrs. Carabelle G.
Dickey, Mrs. Raymond P. Harris, 1I.D.d Helen Ross. The article on
woman suffrage by Kate Debs appears in the Terre Haute Post, May
21, 19](); Appeal to Reason, June 11, 1910; ProgressifJ8 Woman, July
1910. For the biography proposed by Max Ehrmann, see Eugene Debs
to Ehrmann, February 15, 1910, Ehrmann M ss, and the Notes by Max
Ehrmann. The anecdote involving Edwin Markham is taken from
Talks With Debs, 107; the autographed copy of "Man with the Hoe"
is now owned by David A. Shannon. The stirring incident recounted
by the carpenter is taken from Eaau Carnes to Dr. John R. Shannon,
February 1940, no day (Shannon).
SOURCES
Fred Warren's return of the pardon is told by George Milburn in the
cited article; it was verified by Mr. Warren in a conversation with Ann
Fagan Ginger. The best source on the McNamara case is the Appeaz
to Reason; see also Coleman, Debs, 252. The quoted letter of March 14,
1912, is Eugene Debs to Joseph A. Labadie, Labadie Mss.
For the Socialist campaign of 1912 and the factional fight, see the
convention Proceedings; Bill Haywood's Book, 257; International So-
cialist Review; New York Cazl; Tom Hickey's article in The Rebel, May
1, 1915; Appeal to Reason; Wilshire's, September 1912. The quotation
by Art YoUng is taken from Art Young, 216. The story involving the
feminine dainties and Eugene Debs was told to me by Shubert Sebree,
who heard it from Theodore Debs.
Debs' visit to the Federal Commissioner in Terre Haute was de-
scribed for me by Noble C. Wilson. The basic facts about the threatened
indictment of J. A. Wayland on a morals charge were told to Ann Fagan
Ginger by Fred D. Warren; see also Upton Sinclair, American Outpost,
209. Wayland's suicide note is printed in Coleman, Debs, 266. The
epitaph by Kate O'Hare is taken from the Appeal to Reason, N ovem-
ber 16, 1912.
CHAPTER XVI
I am indebted to Delbert Earley, Mrs. Raymond P. Harris, John
Keracher, Winifred O'Connell, Fra.nk P. O'Hare, Will Schuhardt.
Shubert Sebree, Phil Wagner, Noble C. Wilson, Peter Witt, andMorris
H. Wolf for material used in this chapter.
The 1910 self-criticism by Debs is taken from his letter to Peter
Witt, February 15, 1910, Witt Mss. For the comment by Floyd Dell,
see rus autobiography, Homecoming, 267. The 1918 incident was told
to me by Morris H. Wolf. The anecdote involving the Socialist editor
in Terre Haute was related to me by Noble C. Wilson.
At least twenty-five persons told me about the quarrel between
Kate Debs and Theodore, and I feel satisfied that the attitudes here
ascribed to both of them are fairly accurate. The incident involvmg
Carl Stahl was told to me by Helen RoSS; Morris H. Wolf described for
me Debs' diplomacy when Kate publicly complained about her hus-
band's sacrifices. The portrait of Kate Debs in this book is based on
more than a dozen newspaper interviews with her between 1894 and
1921, on testimonials by her husband, and on my own interviews with
more than two dozen persons who knew her. Many of these persons
were quite critical, and I have tried to include their criticisms and to
explain them in terms of Kate's character. It is my belief, for reasons
indicated in the text, that her supporters have a sounder position than
her opponents.
While there is room for differing opinions of Kate Debs, one recent
a1legation CI1DIlot go unchallenged". More than ten years after her death.
it was charged that she had harbored German agents before American
entry into World War 1 and had then hypocritically sold Liberty Bonds
after the declaration of hostilities by Congress. 1 investigated this
contention thoroughly and found the following: The charge was never
made publicly before 1947. Nobody in Terre Haute can offer any
evidence to support it, and the two dozen persons whom 1 questioned
there unanimously said iliat it was new to them. Of all the Socialists
interviewed by me, only James Oneal believed that the charge 'Was
correct, and he offered no evidence beyond the statement that the
charge originated with Theodore Debs. Although the Terre Haute
newspapers, all vigorously prowar, would unquestionably have printed
any facts which discredited Eugene Debs, a search of their columns re-
veals no evidence to support the claim.
The Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia can be followed in the Ap-
peal to Reason. A large collection of clippings relating to Debs and the
so-called girl outcast is in Debs Scrapbooks, IX, i68-72 (Rand); see
also Robert D. Heinl to Eugene Debs, July 7. 1918 (Shannon). The
vacation at Estes Park, the retirement of the ABU debt, and Debs'
retirement are related in Debs Scrapbooks, IX, 278 (Rand); and a
clipping in Debs M ss (Ind Div). The interview in the Terre Ha ute Post
appears January 18. 1914.
For the Socialist antiwar campaign prior to 1914, see Hillquit,
Loose LeafJ88, 148; Denver Post, October i, 1909; Appeal to Reason,
August 5, 1911. After February 1914, Debs' articles and accounts of
his activities appear in the Nationtd Rip-Saw, International. Socialist
Review, and American Socialilfl. Information about Debs' connection
with the Rip-Saw was given me by Phil Wagner and Frank P. O'Hare.
1 am also indebted to an excellent essay by David A. Shannon, Anti-
war Tlwugltt and Activiiy of Eug6ne V. Debs, 1914-1921.
For the Calumet strike see Perlman and Taft, History of Labor, IV,
248-252; Debs' activities in this strike were told to me by Will Schu-
hardt. The best secondary source on the Ludlow Massacre is Yellen,
American Labor Struggles, chapter 7. The statement by John D. Rocke-
feller, Jr., to a Congressional committee is given by Granville Hicks.
John Reed. 141.
The quoted letter from Debs to Upton Sinclair was written January
12, 1916, Sinclair M ss. The article by Debs beginning "I am opposed to
SOURCES 479
every war but one" is taken from the Appeal to Reason. September 11.
1915. His epitaph for Daniel DeLeon appears in the New York People,
July 11, 19i4. }'or his attack on the IWW, see MiTUJTs' Magazine, May
7, 1914. The letter to Max Ehrmann about the Ann Arbor meeting was
written January 21" 1916, Ehrmann M 88. The letter attacking the New
York Call was written to Louis Kopelin, February 16, 1916, and is
quoted by Painter, Debs, lIS.
For the 1916 Congressional campaign in Terre Haute, the stories in
the Socialist press and the local newspapers were supplemented by
interviews with three members of Debs' campaign
Schuhardt, Shubert Sebree, and Noble C. Wilson. Mrs. Raymond P.
Harris told me about a friend who saw Kate Debs waving to her
husband at a street-meeting; and Winifred O'Connell told me how she
found Kate in tears over the local gossip. That Kate marched in the
final parade was confirmed by Mr. Sebree and Mr. Wilson, and Debs'
monologue about Lea Mia6rables W8.'l told to me by Mr. Wilson.
As background material on American entry into the war I have used
chlefly Walter Millis, The lWad to War; Charles Seymour, American
Neutrality, 1914-1917; C. C. Tansill, America Goes to War. The classic
Marxian statement is Nikolai Lenin's Imperialism, whlch lucidly ana-
lyzes the changes in world capitalism since 1890. The AFL conference
in March 1917 is described by Lorwin, American Federation of Labor,
144-5.
CHAPTER XVII
Material for this. chapter was furnished by Frederic Heath, John
Keracher, Frank P. O'Hare, Helen Ross, Lena Schuhardt, Oswald
Schuhardt, Will Schuhardt, Shubert Sebree, Maurice Sugar, Norman
Thomas, Alfred Wagenknecht, and Noble C. Wilson.
The best source for this period is the National I;lip-Saw (renamed
Social Reoolution). The background material was taken from a score of
Socialist periodicals and autobiographies by Socialists, all of which are
listed in the Bibliography.
The St. Louis Declaration was printed in all of the joUl'IJ8ls;
it is reprinted in full by Fine, op. cit., 810-4. The contemporary jour-
nalistic accounts of the St. Louis Emergency Convention were supple-
mentedby interviews with several participants-Frederic Heath, John
Keracher, Frank P. O'Hare, Maurice Sugar, and Alfred Wagenknecht.
Charles E. Ruthenberg's negotiations with Debs were told to me by
Mr. Wagenknecht.
The statement attributed to Woodrow Wilson by Frank I. Cobb is
THE BENDING CROSS
reprinted by Walter Millis, Road to War, 480. All of Debs' protests
against the infringements on civil liberties appear in Social Revolution
except his article on the race riot in East St. Louis, which will be found
in 11Ilercollegiate Socialist, December-January 1918. The letter from
Rose Pastor Stokes to Eugene Debs was written July 22, 1916 (Shan-
non). The reference to "the heartening comrade-touch" occurs in
Eugene Debs to Joseph A. Labadie, January 4, 1918, Labadie Maa. The
rumor that Theodore Debs was restraining his brother during this
period was reported to me by Noble C. Wilson. The incident involving
Bishop William M. Brown is described in his letter to Charles Baker,
May 28, 1925, printed in Marguerite Prevey-I n M 6'1Ttoriam, 49-61.
Debs' 1918 statement, "I abhor war," is taken from his plea to the jury,
US f). Eugene V. Deba, Criminal No. 4057, Federal Court for the North-
ern District of Ohio, September 1918. For the cold reception furnished
John Reed by the journalistic world in April 1918, see Hicks, John
Reed, S07.
The letter from Eugene Debs to Kate O'Hare appears in Painter,
Deba, 117. The correspondence of Debs and Frank P. O'Hare, O'Hare
Mss, is also very helpful for the light it casts on Debs' state of mind.
Debs' article ahout the IWW is taken from IntQnatitmal Socialist
Review, February 1918.
The anti-Socialist campaign in Terre Haute is based on the local
newspapers; Debs' article, "The Reward of Paytriotism" (Ind Div);
my interviews with Helen Ross, Lena Schuhardt, Oswald Schuhardt,
Will Schuhardt, Shubert Sebree, and Noble C. Wilson; and Coleman,
Deba, 279-:-80. For Debs' statement on Socialist policy in May 1918, see
a mimeographed press release, Debs Maa (Ind Div). The member of
the Socialist National Committee who visited Terre Haute was Ja.mes
Oneal; see Coleman, Deba, 288-4.
Norman Thomas told me that Debs had given the same speech more
than a dozen times before his indictment by the Federal government.
Two di1ierent versions of the Canton speech are printed in US tI. Debs
(1918), and the interviews with Clyde R. Miller were reported by Mr.
Miller during his testimony in this case. Debs' visit to the Stark
County Workhouse was reported to me by Alfred Wagenlmecht. See
also Cleveland Plain-Dealer, June 17, 1918. The meeting on Debs'
return to Terre Haute was described for me by Noble C. Wilson.
CHAPTER XVIII
~ s . Yetta Land, Shubert ~ b r e e Peter Witt, and Morris H. Wolf
furnished material for this chapter.
SOURCES
481
The complete transcript of the proceedings will be found in US fl.
Eugene V. De.bs, Criminal No. 4057, Federal Court for the Northern
District of Ohio (September 1918). All quotations from the official
record have been taken from this source.
For the visit of John Reed and Art Young to Terre Haute, see John
Reed, "With Gene Debs on the Fourth," Liberator, September 1918;
Art Young: His Life and Timea, 847-9; Art Young, On My Way, 168;
Granville Hicks, John Reed, 809.,The letter from Eugene Debs to
Shubert Sebree was written August 27, 1918, Sebree M ss. According to
Ralph Chaplin, Wabbly, 210, Debs visited the IWW trial while he was
in Chicago in August. For Clarence Darrow's offer of help, see his letter
to Eugene Debs, July 20, 1918 (Shannon). The pre-trial conferences
between Debs and his attorneys were described for me by Morris H.
Wolf; see also Scott Nearing, The Debs Deci8ion, 15.
Those features ofthetrial which are not included in the official record
are taken from Max Eastman, ''The Trial of Eugene Debs," Liberalm.
November 1918 (reprinted as a pamphlet and in Max Eastman, Her068
I HflfJ6 Known) j David Karsner, Debs, chapter i; the contemporary
Cleveland Plc.in-Dealer and New York Timea; report of a speech by
Rose Pastor Stokes, New York TimetJ. September 28,1918; interviews
with Mrs. Yetta Land, Peter Witt, and.Morris H. Wolf.
The portrait of JudgeD. C. Westenhaver is based on Max Eastman's
description and my conversations with three members of the Cleveland
Bar. The hospitality of William Bross Lloyd, the difficulty in keeping
the defendant sober, and the incident at the home of Mrs. Marguerite
Prevey, were all described for me by Morris H. Wolf. On Eugene Debs'
stock of Lincoln legends, see Karsner, Debs, 9; and Max Eastman,
The Trial of Eugene Debs (pamphJet reprint), 22.
CHAPTER XIX
Material for this chapter was contributed by Alfred Bosch, John
Keracher; Shubert Sebree, Alfred Wagenknecht, and Noble C. Wllson.
The comments by Heywood Broun are taken from his newspaper
column, "The Dream of Debs," as reprinted in It Seem8 To Me, 1925-
1935. The analysis here given of Debs' career is original with me, at
least as to its emphases and interpretation. I also believe this is the
first time it has been pointed out that Debs' plea to thejury was an
edited version of hundreds of his previous speeches, with a paragraph
largely borrowed from John Brown.
The incident involving Clyde R. Miller is taken from Miller, The
Proce8S of Per8uasion, 75-6. The information about Debs' peFSonal and
THE BENDING CROSS
financial affairs is contained in Theodore Debs to Upton Sinclair, No
vember 6, 1918, Sinclair M ss. The letter from Eugene Debs to Sinclair
about Jimmie Higgiru was written September 19, 1918. The incidents
involving Shubert Sebree and Noble C. Wilson were told to me by Mr.
Sebree and Mr. Wilson, respectively, and the letter from Eugene Debs
to Sebree is dated September 20, 1918, Sebree M ss. For Debs' letter to
John Reed, see Granville Hicks, John Reed, 814. For Debs' tour of
northern Ohio, see Detroit News, April 1, 1919; New Solidarity (Chi-
cago), March 80, 1919. Debs' pledge of support to Soviet Russia,
November 1918, is reprinted in Alexander Trachtenberg, Eugene V.
Debs, 67-70. The quotation from the New Year's card is taken from
Eugene Debs to Joseph A. Labadie, marked by Labadie "1-4-1919,"
Labadie M 88.
For the decision of the United States Supreme Court on Debs' ap-
peal, see Eugene V. Debs II. U. S., M9 US ~ (March 1919). The letter
from Oliver Wendell Holmes is printed in Holmes-Pollock Letters, n, 7.
For Debs' statement on the decision, see Liberator, April 1919.
Practically all of the material about the trip to MoundsviJIe is taken
from a pamphlet by David Karsner, Debs Goes to Prison (reprinted as
chapter 8 of David Karmer, Debs). Alfred Wagenknecht gave me his
memories of the trip, and John Keracher described for me the protest
meeting in Cleveland. See also New York Times, April 12, 1919.
For Debs' two months at Moundsville see Karsner, Debs, chapter 4.
The message from Theodore Debs to Eugene is taken from a type-
written draft, April 14, 1919, Debs Mss (Shannon). The letter to Horace
Traubel is in Karsner, Debs, 99. Alfred Bosch described for me his visit
to Moundsville. The information about the Soviet attempt to win
Debs' release is given in Detroit News, October 21, 1926. In December,
1926, the Lahor Defender printed a letter from an inmate of Mounds-
ville prison describing the impression that Eugene Debs had made on
his contem,poraries there.
CHAPTER XX
Two persons who were prisoners at Atlanta during Debs' stay and
who furnished me with much information shall remain un.named here.
The best source for this period is the series of newspaper columns by
Eugene Debs, published after his death as Walls and Bars. Debs'
transfer from Moundsville is described by David Karsner, Debs, chap-
ter 5. For a different version of the motives behind his transfer, see
Liberator, September 1919. Frequent reports by Debs' visitors appear
SOURCES 483
in Appeal to ReQ3on, Ohicago Socialist, Liberator, and New York caU,
throughout the term of his imprisonment.
The split in the Socialist Party is best followed in those radical
journals representing the various factions. See also Ella Reeve Bloor,
We Are Many; William Z. Foster, From Bryan to Stalin; Bill H ayllXJOffs
Book; Morris Hillquit,Loose Leaves From a Busy Life; James Oneal,
Amen:can Communism. The most helpful secondary source is Granville
Hicks, John Reed; see particularly the chronological chart, 420-1. For
Debs' attitude toward the various factions in this period see Karsner,
Talks With Debs, 155-61; Coleman, Debs, 315-6; and particularly his
interview with the Socialist notification committee, New York Ti1M8.
May 15, 1920.
For the statement by Debs about John L. Lewis see Karsner, Talks
With Debs, 95: about "force and violence" see a clipping, Debs M8S
(Labadie). His Views on The BrQ3s Check are contained in Mable D.
Curry to Upton Sinclair, June 10, 1920; on M ammonarl in Eugene Debs
to Upton Sinclair, October 26, 1920; both in Sinclair M ss. For Debs'
account of the minister's visit, see Karsner, Debs, 10-11. The intro-
spective letter from Eugene Debs to Theodore is printed by Coleman,
Debs, 320-1.
For Clarence Darrow's visit, see The Story of My Life, 71-2: Debs,
Walls and Bars, 95-6. The interview with Charles Wood appears in
Literary Digest, October 23, 1920. The anecdote which depicts the
warden's hysteria when Debs is punished is taken from John Haynes
Holmes, Deb_Lover of Men, 13. The letter to Upton Sinclair about
the editorial in the Christian Science M onilar was written by Theodore
Debs, October 26, 1920, Sinclair M 8S. Debs' objections to being called
a "grand old man" are emphatically stated in his leaflet, TIw Fightfor
Liberty, 4.
Theodore Debs seems to despair of any hope for his brother's prompt
pardon in a letter to Frank P. O'Hare, November 23, 1920, O'Hare
M88. For the recommendation by A. Mitchell Palmer, see New York
Times, February 1, 1921. Woodrow Wilson's statement is taken from
Joseph P. Tumulty, Woodrow Wil80n As1 Know Him, 505. .
The attitude of the Communists toward the amnesty campaign and
Debs' candidacy in 1920 was reported to me by Alexander Trachten-
berg, Alfred Wagenknecht, and William Weinstone, all of whom ex-
pressed the belief that it had been a grave mistake. See also the articles
by Alexander Bittelman, Earl Browder, and William Z. Foster, The
Communist, September 1939. The invaluable correspondence of Eugene
484
THE BENDING CROSS
Debs and Otto Branstetter during 1921-192!l will be found in Debs
Mss (IndDiv).
Much of the information on the amnesty campaign is taken hom
David A Shannon, Anti-war Tlwught and Activity of Eugene V. Debs,
1914-1921. Debs' trip to Washington is reported in New York Times,
March !l5, 19!11; the purchase of the quill toothpicks by Jesse Smith
was told to me by Peter Witt. For Daugherty's statement about Debs,
see Clarence Darrow, op. cit., 7S. For Clyde R. Miller's conversations
with Newton D. Baker and Warren G. Harding, see Miller, op. cit.,
76-7. For Norman Hapgood's visit see Debs, WaUa and Bars, 97; for
the visit of Samuel Gompers see ibid., 96, and Karsner, Talka With Deba,
69-60. The letter from A. Producer to Eugene Debs, May 6, 19!11, is
in Debs Mss (Shannon).
Arthur Baur's activity in connection with the Palmer Raids was
told to me by Noble C. Wilson. The Christmas card, 1919, from Kate
Debs to Eugene is in Debs Maa (Shannon). The remainder of the sec-
tion is based on the correspondence of Kate Debs and Kate O'Hare,
O'Hare Mss; this is the largest collection of letters written by Kate
Debs.
The activities of Lincoln Steffens during the final month of 1921 are
told in Steffens, Autobiography, 848-4; The Lettera of Lincoln Stefferra,
1,580-1: Debs, Walls and Bara, 98. The announcement of the commu-
tation by the White House is reported in New York Times, Decem-
ber U, 1921. For the statement by Debs, "These men need me ,"
see Bloor, We Are Many, 148-9. The telegram from Debs to his wife is
in Debs Maa (Shannon). Debs describes his departure from Atlanta in
Wa1la and Bara, 122-6.
CHAPTER XXI
George D. Brewer, Charles W. Ervin, Powers Hapgood, Frank P.
O'Hare, Will Schuhardt, Shubert Sebree, Phil Wagner, and Noble C.
Wilson contributed material for this chapter.
More than half the material in this entire chapter is taken from
Karsner, Talks With Deba, where the statements 'can easily be found.
The other indispensable source is the correspondence of Eugene Debs
and Otto Branstetter, Debs Mss (Iud Div).
The selection from the Emporia Gasette is taken from William Allen
White, The Editor and Hia People, 208. For the incident involving
Urbain Ledoux, see New York Timea, December 1921. The state-
ment by Samuel Gompers is taken from StJ1J6nty Years, I, 416. The
description of the reception in Terre Haute was pieced together from
SOURCES
Kate Debs Scrapbooks (Shannon); James H.Maurer, It Can Be Done,
i50-2; the contemporary Terre Haute newspapers; and interviews with
Charles W. Ervin, Frank P. O'Hare, wm Schuhardt, Shubert Sebree.
Phil Wagner, and Noble C. Wilson. All of the incidents during Kars-
ner's stay in Terre Haute are taken from Talks With Debs.
I was unable to find any evidence that Debs and Altgeld had ever
met, and there is also some positive confirmation. According to Harry
Barnard, he heard from George A. Schilling that Debs and Altgeld
exchanged autographed photographs, but never met personally.
The incident involving George D. Brewer was told to me by Mr.
Brewer; see also the unsigned review of Irving Stone's AdfJeTsary in the
House, American Freeman, February 1948. The letter from Eugene
Debs to J. O. Bentall, April 8, 1 ~ l , is in Debs Mss (Iod Div). For the
information about Debs' prison articles, see Walls and Bars, !l1. !l2, is.
Debs' statement of the three immediate problems appears in Appeal
to Rea.Ytm, April 15, 192!l.
For Debs' telegram to Lenin, see Talks With Debs, 171-8; see also
Steffens, A'ldobiography, 844; Mary Heaton Vorse, Footnote to Folly,
880. The letter from Debs to William Z. Foster, August !l6, 1 ~ l , is in
Talks With Debs, 96-7.
The incident involving August Claessens was told to me by Mr.
Claessens; Debs' participation in foot races at the sanitarium was told
to me by Sol K1apman. Carl Haessler described for me his visits with
Debs in Elmhurst. For Debs' comments on the railroad strike of 192!l,
see his article, "What You Fought for in the War," Debs Mss (Ind
Div); his statement after he was rejected by the BLF convention is
contained in a press release, Debs M ss (Iod Di v). The three statements
by Debs about death are taken from these sources: Medical Review af
&mews, Febnlary 1914; letter to Otto Branstetter. March !l5, 1 ~ l ,
Debs M ss (lnd Div); Detroit News, October !l1, 1926. The letter from
Cad Sandburg to Debs is dated November !l6, 1922 (Shannon). All
other information about Debs' convalescence at Lindlahr is taken from
Talks With Debs. 187-!l21.
Debs' declaration of principles appears in New York Call, October
8,1922 (reprinted in part by Karsner, Talks With Debs, 82-8).
CHAPTER XXII
For material in this chapter, I am indebted to Louis B. Boudin, Earl
Browder, August Claessens, Peter Fagan, Carl Haessler, Mrs. Powers
Hapgood, Algernon Lee, Frank Pfister, John C. Prechtel, Mr. and Mrs.
Shubert Sebree, Norman Thomas, and John M. Work. During the fina:!
years of his life Debs did not contribute regularly to any specific
periodicals, but several of his statements appear in the New York
Call and the New Leader.
For the bitter strife between Socialists and Communists in the trade
lDlions, see American Federationist, May 1922; Lalxn Herald, June
1922; Liberator, June 1922; James Oneal, American Communi8m;
William Z. Foster, From Bryan to Stalin. For Debs' hesitation about
policy, see Otto Branstetter to Eugene Debs, September 22, 1922, and
Debs to Branstetter, Scptember 23, 1922, Debs Maa (Ind Div). Debs'
visit to the Chicago offices of the TUEL was reported to me by Earl
Browder.
The conversation with Morris Hillquit is described by Billquit,
Looae Leavea, 49-50. For Debs' habit of visiting Union Square, see Art
Young, On My Way, 16(}--!l. The resolution by the General Assembly
of Wisconsin is quoted in Painter, Deba, 155. A large collection of
clippings about the Ohio t o ~ of 1928 will be found in Debs M 88 (Ind
Div).
Debs' acute illness during the winter of 9 ~ 9 2 4 is reported in
Theodore Debs to Joseph A. Labadie, December 12, 1928, March 6,
June 10, 1924, Labadie M aa; and Theodore Debs to George A. Schil-
ling, April 17, 1924, Schilling Maa. Debs' library is still located in the
Rand School. His comments about the article by Karsner are taken
from his interview with Floy Ruth Painter, August 28, 1924, quoted by
Painter, Deba. 188. For his relations with Carl Sandburg in 1924. see
Sandburg to Debs, October 18, 1924 (Shannon). The incident involving
the Chicago local of the Bakers Union was told to me by August
Claessens. Debs' visit to the home of Ralph Chaplin is described by
Chaplin, Wobbly, 840-8.
For the dispute between Debs and Foster during the 1924 Presi-
dential campaign, see James Oneal, American Communi8m. 208-9. The
letter to Joseph A. Labadie was written January 5,1925, Labadie Maa.
Debs' address to the Socialist national convention of 1925 is contained
in a clipping from the Socialist World. Debs Maa (Ind Div). Carl
Haessler told me his memories of this convention. The incident in-
volving S. M. Reynolds was told tome by John M. Work. Debs' state-
ment about the Labor Defense Council is contained in a clipping from
the Socialist World, Debs Maa (Ind Div).
Debs' jovial approach to death is taken from a clipping in Kate Debs
Scrapbooks (Shannon). For the expressions about Bryan and Altgeld,
see Eugene Debs to Clarence DlUTOw, June 4,1925, Schilling Maa. For
the trip to California. in 1925, see Theodore Debs to Upton Sinclair.
SOURCES
487
July 31, 1925, Sinclair Ma8. Mr. Sinclair described for me one of his
conversations with Eugene Debs.
For Debs' speech at the 1925 convention of the Indiana Federation
of Labor, see Terre Haute newspapers, August 28, 1 9 ~ 5 John C.
Prechtel gave me his memories of this occasion. The description of
"St. Eugene Victor" is contained in a letter from Peter Fagan to me,
July 80. 1946. The negotiations with the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Com-
mittee during Debs' trip to Boston were told to me by Mrs. Powers
Hapgood. The speech at Hunt's Point Palace was described for me by
August Claessens and Algernon Lee. The banquet for Debs was related
to me by Louis B. Boudin.
From January until March, 1926, Debs' weekly editorials appear in
American Appeal, which is also the source for most of the information
about the trip to Bermuda. For Debs' earlier plans to travel, see Social
Democratic Herald, August 5,1899; Debs Scrapbooks, VIll, 65 (Rand).
Debs' final plea for Sacco and Vanzetti is contained in American
Appeal, June 29, 1926; his pampblet on tbis subject for the Labor
Defense Council is in Debs M 88 (Fairbanks). For Debs' illness in May
and June, 19!16, see Theodore Debs to Joseph A. Labadie, July 7, 1926,
Labadie Mas. His final trip to the City Hall in Terre Haute and the
events leading up to his death at Lindlahr are all taken from clippings
in Debs Ma8 (Labadie).
The quoted, expressions of condolence are taken from Clarence Dar-
row to Kate Debs, November 5, 1926; Edgar Lee Masters to Kate
Debs, November 13, 1926; Sinclair Lewis to Kate Debs and Theodore
Debs, April 80, 1927 (Shannon). The mourning is described in all of
the Socialist journals and many metropolitan newspapers. For de-
scriptions of the funeral, see all of the Terre Haute and Indianapolis
newspapers; see also M. Haldeman.Julius, "The Funeral of Eugene
Debs;' Haldema71rJvliua Monthly, December 1926. Norman Thomas
gave me his memories of the funeral. The comment by Heywood Broun
is taken from his article cited above.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
I. UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS
Grover Cleveland MIIII, Library of Congress. Valuable for Pullman
boycott.
Clarence S. Darrow MilS, Library of Congress.
Eugene V. Debs Collection, Fairbanks Library, Terre Haute, Ind.
Eugene V. Debs Mlfll, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis. Three
unimportant letters from Eugene Debs to various correspondents,
1907-1908.
Eugene V. Debs Mss, Indiana Division, Indiana State Library, indi-
anapolis. Exceedingly valuable correspondence of Eugene Debs and
Otto Branstetter, 19!U-1922. Also drafts by Eugene Debs of several
articles for the Socialist Press Service, 1922; a large collection of
correspondence relating to the amnesty movement; and many pub-
lished items by Eugene Debs.
Eugene V. Debs Collection, Joseph A. Labadie Archives, University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. Few manuscripts, but an excellent collection
of newspaper clippings, published material and Socialist periodicals.
Eugene V. Debs Collection, Rand School of Social Science, New York
City. No manuscripts, but still the best single source of material on
Eugene Debs. Complete files for the relevant periods of the Locamo-
twe Firemen's Magazine; Proceedinglf of the BLF national conven-
tions; minutes of st'.ssions of the Supreme COlmcil of the United
Orders of Railway Employees; Railway Times; Social De1IU>CTat;
Appeal to Reason; plus broken files of many other radical journals.
Of particular value are nine volumes (800 pages per volume) of
clippings kept by Debs, 1894-1918; a separate series of clippings
(about 600 pages) that he kept in Girard; and 150 volumes from his
personal library.
Eugene V. Debs Mss, possession of David A. Shannon, Pittsburgh, Pa.
notes from Eugene Debs to Mrs. Kate Debs; about three
dozen letters to Debs from various correspondents, three
valuable scrapbooks kept by Kate Debs; a large collection of clip-
pings and photographs.
Eugene V. Debs Mss, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.
Eleven letters from Eugene and Theodore Debs to William F. Gable,
489
THE BENDING CROSS
Horace Traubel, and an unnamed person, 1909-1918. Also an un-
marked carbon copy of the typewritten Ms. for Debs' book, Walls
and Bars.
Daniel DeLeon Mss, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison. Several
letters to DeLeon during 1897 and 1898 contain interesting refer-
ences to Eugene Debs.
Finley Peter Dunne Mss, Library of Congress. An undated birthday
greeting to Mr. Dunne from Eugene Debs, Robert Hunter, and
Mother Mary Jones.
Max ;Ehrmann Mss, possession of Mrs. Ehrmann, Terre Haute, Ind.
About thirty letters from Eugene Debs to Mr. Ehrmann, 1905-1918,
pIns Mr. Ehrmann's valuable Notes (covering the period up to the
Pullman boycott) for a biography of Eugene Debs.
H. O. Fuhrberg Collection, possession of Mr. Fuhrberg, Seattle, Wash.
'Scrapbooks of clippings, plus the correspondence of Mr. Fuhrberg
and Theodore Debs.
Samuel Gompers Letter-Books, American Federation of Labor, Wash-
ington. D. C. Valuable correspondence with Eugene Debs, 1891-
1895.
Walter Q. Gresham Mss, Library of Congress. Valuable on Pullman
boycott.
Frederic Heath M ss, possession of Mr. Heath, Milwaukee, Wis. Im-
portant letters from Eugene Debs to Frederic Heath, IL L James,
and Miss Elizabeth Thomas, 1897-1905, including several in hand-
writing of Kate Debs.
Robert G. Ingersoll M ss, Library of Congress. Letters from Eugene
Debs to Mr. Ingersoll and his family, 1879-1916. Also valuable for
the Presidential campaign of 1896.
Joseph A. Labadie Mss, Labadie Archives, Ann Arbor. Thirty letters
from Eugene and Theodore Debs to Mr. Labadie, 1905':'1926.
Henry Demarest Lloyd Mss, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
Mr. Lloyd's correspondence with Eugene Debs, Victor L. Berger,
Clarence Darrow, Isaac Hourwich, Florence Kelley, and Thomas J.
Morgan is very valuable for the period 1894-1908.
Frank P. O'Hare Mss, possession of Mr. O'Hare, St. Louis, Mo. Im-
portant letters from Eugene Debs to Mr. O'Hare, 1917-1922. Kate
Debs' letters to Mrs. O'Hare, 1921, are the only collection of her
letters known to me.
Richard Olney M 8S, Library of Congress. Valuable on Pullman boycott.
Daniel L. Powell, Jr., Scrapbook, Labadie Archives, Ann Arbor. Help-
ful on Socialist Party of Detroit.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 491
James Whitcomb Riley Mss, possession of Miss Lesley Payne, Indi-
anapolis, Inrl. Six letters from Eugene Debs to Mr. Riley,
George A. Schilling Mss, Illinois Historical Society, Springfield. A few
scattered letters from Eugene Debs to Mr. Schilling and Clarence
S. Darrow, 1895, 1896, 19!U.
Shubert Sebree Mss, possession of Mr. Sebree, Terre Haute, Ind. Six
letters from Eugene Debs to Mr. Sebree, 1916-1918. Also some
valuable clippings.
Upton Sinclair Mss, possession of Mr. Sinclair, Monrovia, Calif.
Thirty letters from Eugene and Theodore Debs to Mr. Sinclair.
1915-1926, including several which are very valuable.
Henry Vincent Scrapbooks, Labadie Archives, Ann Arbor. Collection
of clippings and photographs relating to Eugene Debs' life in Girard.
Peter Witt Mss, possession of Mrs. Witt, Cleveland, Ohio. A few scat-
tered letters from Eugene Debs to Mr. Witt, 1910--1924.
II. GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
Debs v United States, 78 Fed 1021, appeal to 7th Cir. Ct. App. N. Dist.
ill (dismissed on consent of counsel), March 1896.
Eugene V. Debs fl. United States, Transcript oj Record. Supreme Court
of the United States, No. 714, Filed October 24,1918.
Debs fl United States, 89 S. Ct. (1919).
Dlinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, Thirteenth Annual Report. Coal in
IUinois, 1894. Springfield, 1895.
In re Debs, 159 US 251 (no opinion, petition for writ of error denied),
January 1895.
In re Debs, 158 US 564 (petition for writ of habeas corpus denied),
May 1895.
New York State Senate. Revc1vJio1w:ry Radicalism: ItBHistory, P1l:i'p0ge
and Tactics. Report of the Joint Legislative Committee Investigating
Seditious Activities, Filed April 24, 1920.4 volumes. Albany,
United Stares v Debs, 64 Fed 724, Cir. Ct. N. Dist. Ill. (text of the in-
junction), December 1894.
United Stare8 v Debs, Transcript oj Reoord, Fed. Ct. N. Dist. Ohio, No.
4057 Criminal (September 1918).
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Michigan Copper District
Strike. 68rd Congress, 2nd Session. House Document No. 741.
Washington, 1914.
United States Commission on Industrial Relations. Final Report and
Testimony oj the Commission on Industrial Relationa. Created by Act
THE BENDING CROSS
of Congress ,August 28. 1912. 64th Congress. 1st Session. Senate
Document No. 415. 11 volumes. Washington, 1916.
United States Department of Justice. US fI Debs, Bulletin No. 155
(1918).
United States Strike Commission. Report of the Colorado Strike In-
vestigation, ma.de lmder H.R.887. 68rd Congress, Srd Session. Wash-
ington, 1915.
United States Strike Commission. Report on the Chicago Strike of
June--July, 1894. 58rd Congress, 8rd Session" Senate Executive
Documents, vol. II. Washington, 1895.
III. WRITINGS OF EUGENE V. DEBS
A. Oollections of writings and speeches
Debs: His Life, Writings anSpeeches, edited by Bruce Rogers, with a
short biography by S. M. Reynolds. Girard, Kansas: 1908.
Labor and Freedom. St. Louis, Mo.: 1916.
Pastels of Men. New York: 1919.
Speeches of Eugene V. Debs, with a Critical Introduction, edited by
Alexander Trachtenberg. New York: 1928.
Walls and Bars. Chicago: 1927.
B. Periodicals to which Debs regularly cO'flf;riJ.mted
articles
LocQ7Mtive Firemen's Magazine, 1878-1894.
Railwa:y Times. 1894-1898 (name changed to Social Democrat in 1897.
to Social De11UJeratic Herald in 1898).
Social Democratic Herald, 1898-1905.
International &r:ialist Rct>iew, 1900-1918.
Appeal to Reason, 1906-1918.
New York Call, 1908-1926.
National Rip-Saw, 1918-1918 (became'Social R6flolution 1917).
American Socialist, :i915-1917.
New York Liberator, 1919-1924.
Debs Magazine, 1922-19.23.
American Appeal, 1926.
c. Articles in other periodicala. Since at least five
thousand. speeches and articles by Eugene Debs
found thelr into prin!. thialist w highly selective.
I omitted all ari'Wl88 which appear in the
perio<!-w.
als
or the collectwns listed above. From his
output I have chosen only those itertUJ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
which for various reaaOM seemed of particular
interest.
498
"The American University and the Labor Problem," Adelbert, (Cleve-
land, Ohio), 6: 167-169.
"Another Talk on the Chicago & Northwestern Conspiracy," Switch-
. men's Jounud, August 1906,563-574.
"Appeal of the Radical Parties," A1I'Ie'rican Affairs, October 1904,

"Appeal to the Working Class," Terre Haute Toiler, February 7,
"Appeal to Young America," St. Louis Labor, July 1, 1905.
"The Barons at the White House," Terre Haute Toiler, October 10,
1902.
"Climax of Capitalism," San Francisco Adronce, April 1901.
"The Coming Labor Union," Miners' Magazine, October 1905.
"A Convict's Christmas Offering," Workers' Chronicle, (Pittsburg,
Kansas), December 25, 1914.
"Days of Long Ago" (a Letter), Locomciive Firemen's and Enginemen's
Magazine, January 191!l, 117. .
"Debs, as Socialist, Denies that Congress is Representative," New
York World, March 17, 1928.
"Eugene V. Debs on California Situation," Los Angeles Social Demo-
crat, July SI, 1915.
"Diabolical Plot of Capitalists," Industrial Worker, (Joliet, Ill.),
March 1906.
"Did We Vote for Municipal Mix-Up," Terre Haute Post, February
1914.
"'Duties of the Hour," Industrial Worker, (Joliet, Ill.), July 1906.
"Education of Locomotive Engine-men," Locomotive Engineering,
January 12.
"'Face to Face," Wilshire's, September 1904, 885-886.
"'Getting Together," Labor Herald, April 192!l, S-4.
"Growth of Unionism in America," A.L.U . Journal, September S, 1905.
"Harriman Railroad Strike," Chicago Socialist, October 10, 1911.
"'Bulman & Co.," Terre Haute Gazette, September !l9, 189S.
"Ingerson," Melting Pot, April 1915, 14-15.
"Letter to the Editor," Terre Haute Post, May 11, 1915.
"Man and Mule," Switchmen's Journal, September 1906, 65H5S.
"Max Ehrmann and His Work" (Debs Scrapbooks, IX, S05, Rand).
''M:ooney Must Be Saved," Pearson's, May 1917, 484-485.
"Old BiH Robinson," New York Evening Journal, January 19, 1902.
"On the Death of Daniel DeLeon," New York People, July 11, 1914.
THE BENDING CROSS
"Organization for Emancipation," Industrial Worker, (Joliet., 111.),
September 1906.
''Reminiscences of Myron W. Reed," New York C011U'ade, November
1908, 84-85.
"Riley, Nye and Field," National Magazine, January 1914, 611-617.
''Robert G. Ingersoll," Amsrican Jemrnal of Politics, 2: 198-202 (1898).
''Royal Epidemic," Terre Haute Toiler, March 14, 1902.
"A Sentiment on Social Reform," Masses, January 1918.
"Social Democracy," National Magazine. October 1898.
"The Social Democratic Party," I'TUkpendent. August ~ 1900. 2018-
21.
"Socialist Ideals," Arena, November 1908, 482-484.
"Socialist Party's Appea1," IndependenJ,. October 15, 1908, 875-880.
"Socialist Unity," Socialist Re1fiew, June 1920, 15-16.
"Soldiers, Slaves and Hell," Iron City Socialist, (pittsburgh, Pa.),
March 14, 1914.
''Stray Leaves from the Note Book of a Labor Agitator," New York
Comrade, June 1904, 187-189.
"SUS8D B. Anthony: A Reminiscence." Socialist Woman. (Girard).
January 1909, 8.
"Three Letters from Debs to Frank Putnam, Houston, Texas, March
14-25, 1912," Rebel, (Hallettsville, Texas), April 6, 1912.
"To My Crawford County Comrades," Worlrers' Chronicle. (PittB-
burg, Kansas), March 6, 1914.
''Warren and Gompers," Miners' Magazine. December 22, 1911.
"What Can You Dor" Progressi'Oe Woman, (Girard), June 1909.
"What's Wrong with Chicago," Chicago Socialist, August 22, 1911.
''Who Organized the B. of R.T.?" Switchmen's Jemrnal, September
1906. 648--646
. "Woman's Day Is Dawning," Justice, (Bradford, Pa.) February 1911.
"Woman's Vote," Minnesota Union Adoocate. August 80, 1901.
D. Leaflets and pamphl.ets
Coming Labor Union. Chicago: 1905.
Debs' Last Call to the Voters in 1920 and His First CaU in the New
Campaign. Chicago: [1920Pj.
14th Annifl8Tsary of the Birth of the Coming Nation. [Girard, 1907?j.
Inside View of the Appeal to Reason. Girard: [1907Pj.
Mission of the Socialist Party. [1904 campaign leaHet].
Motherhood and Suffrage. [Chicago, 1915rj.
Stupem1.<Yu3 AchierJemint. [Girard, 1908?j.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
To th8 Women oj America! [Chicago, 19!10?].
Trihute of LCII!e to His Father and Motlwr, at the Golden Wedding An-
niversary of Jean Daniel Debs and Marguerite Bettrich Debs at
Terre Haute, Indiana, September 18, 1899. Terre Haute [circa 1899].
Why Railroaders Should Be Socialw. Girard: [1912?].
Winning a World. New York: [l9!lO's].
Woman-Comrade and Equal. {Socialist Party, no t e ~
IV. CONTEMPORARY ARTICLES
IN PERIODICALS
(Selecleil)
Baker, Ray Stannard. "Organized Capital Challenges Orga,oized
Labor," McClure's, July 1904, 279-29!l.
Benson, Allan L. "The Socialist Candidates," Pearsorfs, August 1912.
Bicknell, George. ''Eugene V. Debs at Home," Twentieth Century,
August 1910, 890-897.
--''Eugene Victor Debs," Bridgemen's Magasine, February 1914,
67-75.
Callender, Harold. "The Truth about the I.W. W." Masses, November,
December, 1917.
"Candidate Debs is a Beneficent Influence in Prison, but Still a Revo-
lutionist," Literary Digest, October 23, 1920, 57-58.
Cannon, James P. ''Revolutionary Heritage of Eugene Victor Debs,"
Labor Defender, December 1926.
"Eugene V. Debs," American Railroader, September 20, 1885, 1-2.
"Eugene V. Debs," National Federationist, October 15, 1891, 1-2.
"Debs-the Living Link," Current Literature, July 1908, 85-89.
"Mrs. Eugene V. Debs," Socialist Waman, October 1908.
Debs, Katherine M. "The Right of Women to Vote," Terre Haute
Post, May 21, 1910.
Debs, Theodore. "Roosevelt and Beveridge," Terre Haute Post, July
18, 1910.
Eastman, Crystal. "Socialist Party Convention," Liberator, July 1920,
24-29.
Eastman, Max. "Chicago Conventions," Liberator, October 1919,5-19.
--"A Christmas Party," Liberator, February 1928, 5-7.
Ely, Richard T. "Pullman: A Social Study," Harper's, February 1885,
452-466.
Engdahl, J. Louis. "Death of the Socialist Party," Liberator, October
1924, 11-14.
--''Racing toward Socialism," Coming Nation, April 27. 1912.
496 THE BENDING:':'CROSS
--"The Workers' Party i s Launched," Labor Age, February 1922, 14.
--''Socialism versus Syndicalism," Twentieth Century, September
1912,8-10.
England, George Allen. "Story of the Appeal," Appeal to Reason,
August 00, September 6 and 18, 1918.
Foster, William Z. "Revolutionary Tactics," Agitator, (Home, Wash-
ington), April 16 to July 1, 1912.
Ghent, William J. "The Appeal and Its Influence," Su7'f1e1J, April 1.
1911,24-28.
Gompers, Samuel. "Debs, the Apostle of Failure:' American Feder-
ationUt, September 1908, 786-740.
--"Lesson of the Recent Strikes," N ortk American Rernew, August
1894, 201-iOO.
--"Organized Labor in the Campaign," North American Rernew.
July 1892, 91-96.
Haldeman-Julius, Ma.rcet. "The Funeral of Eugene V. Debs," Halile-
man-Juliua Mcm1klll, December 1926, 8-16.
Hall, Covington. "Debs and Du-ect Action," Solidarity, March !!S,
1912.
Hillquit, Moms. "American Socialists and Moscow," Current History,
October 1920, 16-19.
Hunter, RoberL "The Socialist Party in the Present Campaign,"
&mew of Rernewa, September 1908, 298-299.
Karsner, David. "Debs in 1920," Socialist Review, June 1920, 19-28.
--"The Passing of SociaIism," Current History, June Ilnf, 402r-407.
Lloyd, Henry D. "The Populists at St.Louis," Rernew of Rernewa.
September 1896, 298-808.
McFeely, Otto. "Campaigning with Debs," Wilahire'a, December 1908,
40-5.
Oneal, James. "Changing Fortunes of American Socia.Iism," Current
Hi8tory, April 19240, 92-97.
Pepper, John. "The S.P.-Two Wmgs without a Body," Liberator,
May 1928, 82-88.
Phifer, Charles Lincoln. "Appeal's Fifteenth Anniversary," Appeal to
Reason, August 27, 1910.
Reed, John. "With Gene Debs on the Fourth," Li1ierator, September
1918,7-9.
Ricker, Allen W. "An Attack on Debs," Appeal to Reruon, May 20,
1911.
Roosevelt, Theodore. "Murder Is Murder," Outlook, December 16,
1911, 901-902.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Saposs, David J. "The Line-Up at Cincinnati," Labor Age, September

Sinclair, Upton. "The Socialist Party," World's Work, April 1906,
7481-7482.
Slobodin, Henry L: "The'State of the Socialist Party," International
Socialist Review, March 1917, 589-541.
Steffens, Lincoln. "Eugene V. Debs on What the Matter Is in America
and What to Do about It," Everybody's, October 1908, 455-469.
Sweeney, Charles. ''The Uncaging of Debs," Liherator, February 19!i!2,

Varney, Harold Lord . An American Labor Party in the Making,"
Current Hi$tory, April 1924, 86-91.
Watkins, Gordon S. "Present Status of Socialism in the United States,"
Atlantic Monthly, December 1919, 821-880.
Willard, Cyrus Field. "The Social Democracy," New Time, October
1897, and November 1897, 887-888.
V. CON T E M P 0 R A R Y LEAFLETS AND
PAMPHLETS
(Selected)
Clark, Evans, and Charles Solomon. The Socialists in the New York
Board of Aldermen. New York: 1918.
Condo, Samuel S. Memorial Lecture on Eugene Victor Debs. Marion,
Ind.: 1924.
Debs White Book. Girard: 1920.
Eastman, Max, and others. Debs and the War. Chicago: [1919?}.
Engdahl, J. Louis. Debs and O'Hare in Prison. Chicago: 1919.
An Evening in Girard. Girard: 1908.
Foster, William Z. Bankruptcy oj the American Labor Morement.
Chicago: [1922?}.
Gompers, Samuel. Address to the Arbitration Conference held at
Chicago, TIl., December 17, 1900, under the Auspices ofthe National
<;;ivic Federation. Washington, D. C.: [1900n
HiIlquit, Morris. Present Day Socialism. New York: 1920.
Hollingsworth, J. H. Eugene V. Debs-What His N eighhors Say of Him.
Terre Haute: 1916.
Holmes, John,Haynes. Debs-Laver of Men. New York: 1927.
Hurt, Walter. Eugene V. Debs-An Introduction. Williamsburg, Ohio:
[circa 1910?].
Nearing, Scott. The Debs Decision. New York: [1919?].
Pepper, John. Underground Radicalism: An Open Letter to Eugene V.
Deb8 and to All H une8t Workers Witkin the Sociali8t Party. New York:
[1ge8?].
Ruthenberg, C. E. From the Third Throt/{/h the Fourth Corwention oj the
Worker8 (Communist) Party of America. Chicago:
Sinclair, Upton. Am.mica'8 Greatest Newspaper. Girard: [1910?].
Socialist Campaign Book, 19HZ.
Trachtenberg, Alexander, editor. American Socialists and the War.
New York: 1917.
VI. CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL TRACTS
(Select&!)
Altgeld, John P. Lire Questions. Chicago: 1899.
Broun, Heywood. It Seem8 to Me. New York: 1985.
Carwardine, William H. The Pullman Strike. Chicago: 1894.
Cleveland, Grover. The Government in the Chicago Strike of 1894, (re-
print cJ. speech at Princeton, 1904). Princeton, N. J.: 1918.
Dyche, John A. Bolahevi.nn in American Luhor Union8. New York:
1926.
Foster, William Z. The Great Steel Strike and 118 Leaaona. New York:
1920.
Gompers, Samuel. American Labor and the War. New York: 1919.
--and William English Waning. Out of Their Own Mouths. New
York:
Oneal, James. American CommuniBm. New York: 1927.
Pingree, Hazen S. Facta and Opinions; or. Danger8 That Beset Ua.
Detroit: 1895.
Social Democracy Red Book. Terre Haute: 1900.
Sullivan, J. W. Socialism as an Incubua on the American Lahor MOfJB-
mem. New York: 1909.
Swinton, John. Striking for Life; Labor'8 Side of the Labor Queation.
New York: 1894.
White, William Allen. The Editor and His People, edited by Helen
Ogden Mahin. New York: 1924.
VII. CONTEMPORARY AUTOBIOGRA-
PHIES, BIOGRAPHIES, AND COLLECTED
LETTERS, THAT MENTION
EUGENE V. DEBS
Ameringer, Oscar.lf You Don't Weaken. New York: 1940.
Biographical Sketche8 of Members of the Indiana State Government, 1885.
Indianapolis: [1885?]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
499
Bloor, Ella Reeve. We Are Many. New York: 1940.
Buchanan, Joseph R. The Story of a Lahar A!fitator. New York: 1908.
Chaplin, Ralph. Wobbly. Chicago: 1948.
Commons, John R. Myself. New York: 1984.
Darrow, Clarence. The Story of My Life. New York: 1982.
Dell, Floyd. Homecoming. New York: 1988.
Ea8tman, Max. Enjoyment of Liuing. New York: 1948.
--Heroes I Have Known. New York: 1942.
Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley. Debs, Haywood, Ruihenherg. New York: 1989.
Foster, William Z. From Bryan to Stalin. New York: 1987.
--Pages From a Worker's Life. New York: 1989.
Goldman, Emma. Liuing My Life. New York: 1981.
Gompers, Samuel Seventy Years of Life and Labor. New York: 1925.
Haywood, William D. Bill Haywood's Book. New York: 1929.
HilIquit, Morris. Loose LeafJe8 Frmn a Busy Life. New York: 1984.
Holmes-PoUock Letters, edited by Mark DeWolfe Howe, vol. II.
Cambridge, Mass.: 1941.
Jones, Mary. AutoUiography of Mother Jones. Chicago: 1925.
Karsner, David. Debs, His Authoriaed life and Letters. New York: 1919.
--Horace Traubel: His life and Work. New York: 1919.
Kopelin, Louis. Life of Debs. Girard, Kansas: [1920?j (pamphlet).
Maurer, James. It Can Be Done. New York: 1988.
Poole, Ernest. The Bridge. New York: 1940.
Powderly, Terence V. The Path I Trod. New York: 1940.
Riley, James Whitcomb. The Letters of James Whitccrmb Riley, edited
by William Lyon Phelps. Indianapolis, Ind.: 1980.
Sanger, Margaret. Autobiography. New York: 1988.
Sinclair, Upton. American Outpost. New York: 1982.
Steffens, Lincoln. AutolTiography. New York: 1981.
-- The Letters of LincOln Steffens, edited by Ella Winter and Granville
Hicks. New York: 1988.
Tumulty, Joseph P. Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him. New YOrk:
1921.
Vmcent, Henry. The Editor With a Punch: Wayland. Massillon, Ohio:
1912 (pamphlet).
Vorse, Mary Heaton. A Footnote to FoUy. New York: 1985.
Waldman, Louis. Labor Lawyer. New York: 1944.
Wayland, J. A. LeafJe8 of life. Girard, Kansas: 1912 (pamphlet).
Young, Art. Art Young: His Life and Times, edited by John Nicholas
BeffeI. New York: 1989.
--On My Way. New York: 1928.
VIII. CONTEMPORARY HISTORIOGRAPHY
(SelefJied)
American Federation of Labor. Proceedings of the National Conven-
tions, 1890-1926.
American Labor Year Book, (published annually or biannually, 1916-
19!16). New York: Rand School
American Railway Union. Proceedings of the First Quadrennial Con-
vention, held in Chicago, June 12 to 23, 1894. Chicago: 1894.
DeLeon, Solon, editor. American Labor Wlw's Who. New York: 1925.
Industrial Workers ofthe World. Proceedings of the First Convention,
Founded at Chicago, June 27-July 8, 1905. New York: [1905P).
Socialist Party of the United States. Proceedings of the National
Conventions, 1904-1912.
Secondary Sources
Aldred, Guy A. Convict 9653: America's V iaion M am. Glasgow, Scot-
land: [1942?}.
Barnard, Harry. "Eagle Forgotten": The Life of John Peter Altgeld.
Indianapolis, Ind.: 1988.
Beffel, John Nicholas. "Four Radicals," American Mercury, April
1982,441-447.
Browne, Waldo R. Altgeld of IUinoia. New York: 1924.
Calverton, V. F. "Eugene V. Debs and American Radicalism," Com-
mort Sense, July 1988, 10-18.
Claessens, August. Eugene Victor Debs: A Tribute. New York: 1946.
Coleman, McAlister. Eugene V. Debs: A Man U1IIlfraid. New York:
1980.
--PioTu!ers of Freedom. New York: 1929.
Cox, Ora Ellen. "Socialist Party in Indiana since 1896," India1lll
Magazine of History, June 1916, 95-180.
Destler, Chester McArthur. American Radicalism: 1865-1901. New
London, Conn.: 1946.
Fine, Nathan. Farmer and Lahar Parties in the United States, 1828-
1928. New York: 1928.
Foner, Philip S. Jack London: American Rebel. New York: 1947.
Heritage of Debs: The Fight Against War. Chicago: 1985.
Hicks, Granville. John Reed: The Making of a Revolutw1IIlry. New
York: 1986.
Holbrook, Stewart H. Lost Men of American History. New York: 1948.
James, Henry. Richard Olney & His Public Service. Boston: 1928.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 1101
Knoles, George H. "Populism and Socialism, with Special Reference
to the Election of 1892," PaciJl.c HUiorical Retnew, September 1948,
295-804.
LePrade, Ruth, editor. Debs and the Poets. Pasadena, Calif.: 1920.
Lewis, Arthur Morrow. The Art of .Lecturing. Chicago: 190f!.
Lindsey, Almont. The PuUman Strike. Chicago: 1942.
Lloyd, Caro. He'1l1'Y DrJlTUUest IJoyd. New York: 1912.
Madison, Charles A. Critics and Crwaders. New York: 1947.
Milburn, George. "The Appeal to Reason," American Mercury, July
1987, 859-871.
Miller, Clyde R. Process of Per8UlllJion. New York: 1946.
Morais, Herbert M., and William Cahn. Gene Debs. New York: 1948.
Nevins, Allan. GrOfJ6T' Cleveland. New York: 1982.
Painter, Floy Ruth. That Man Debs and His Life Work. Bloomington,
Ind.: 1929.
Peterson, James. "Trade Unions and the Populist Party," Science and
Society, Spring 1944, 148-160.
Pringle, Henry F. Theodore Rooseveu' New York: 1981.
Sandburg, Carl. American Songbag. New York: 1927.
Schnittkind, Henry T. The Story of Eugene Debs. Boston: 1929.
Shannon, David A. "The Appeal to Reason," (unpublished, 1947).
--"Eugene V. Debs and American Men of Letters," (unpublished,
1947).
--Anti-war Thought and Activity of Eugene V. Debs, 1914-1921.
(unpublished Master's thesis, U. of Wisconsin, 1947).
Stolberg, Benjamin. "What Manner of Man was Gompers," Atlantic
MoritJUy, March 1925,404-412. .
Yellen, Samuel. American Labor Struggles. New York: 1986.
INDEX
AmIoTr. Lyman. 145.
AdalIlll, Samuel, 869.
Addams. Jane, 109, 882.
Akron Times, 888.
Altgeld, John Peter, 94. 124-5. 180.
188. 185-7, 188, lU, 140. 154, 155,
169, 170, 187-8, 190-1, 206, 252,
881. 425-6, 449.
American Appeal, 458-4.. See Debs.
Eugene V.
American Federation of Labor, 87-8,
41-2, 49-50, 90, 98. 107, 144, 148-
50, 162-8, 182-8, 198, 214, 217-21
. !l86-7. 2""", 248, 257-8, 259, !l!18:
284, 805, 882. 885, 888-40. 895-6,
426.488, """7. See Gompers. Samuel.
American Labor Union, !U9-21, 286-7
American Legion, 441. .
American Press Association, 70, 160.
American Protective Association, 68-
9,188.
affection for members of, 270, 275'
all debts paid by Debs, 179. 181'
822; its leaders criticized. 241, 879'
American Revolution of 1775-1788'
25, 65, 74.869, 898.
American Smelting and Refinina Co
!lSI. ...., . ,
American Socialist, 80s.
Ameringer. Oscar. jW9-70.
Anaconda Copper Co . 896.
AnarcWsts and anarcho-syndicalists.
45, 50-2, 288-9. 241, W5-6. 295,
807-9. 810, 811, 812.
Anthony. Susan B., !T, 105, 224-5
800. '
Appeal to Rea8(]T1., 200-1, 281, 246-7,
249-50,252,254-5,265.270,288-4,
289-95,800,808-6,810,
8li-18, 822. 884, 848, 427, """2.
Appleton's Encyclopedia, 25.
Arbitration of labor disputes, 80 156
169. ' ,
Arnold. Benedict. 144, 401.
Arnold. Frank. 80, 82, 88, U, 45.
Arnold, J. W., 185, 188.
Arthur, Peter M., 46, 47, 56, 88. 66,
70, 81, 82, 121, 127. 141, 151, 159.
160,180.
Atchison railroad, U9.
Atlanta, Ga., prison. 889, 890-414,
415,416, 419,422,428-5,428,429,
4SO, 488. 441. US.
American Protective League. 857 868
American Railway Union:
!ts formation. 90-2, 156-7; initiat-
92-8; organizational
prmcIples. 92-8, 259; rejects Ne-
92-8, 116; early and
actions. 94-5; Gompers cnticizes
formation, 95-6; successes, 97-8
100-1, 107, 114; dispute on
Pacific, 101-2; and Great Northern
strike of 1894. 108-7; and Pullman
boycott of 1894, Ill, 116-51' first
national convention. 114-20,' 165; BAER. George F 217-8.
Debs re-elected president. 120' Baker. Charles, 844. 854-5.
leaders indicted and tried for Baker, Newton D., 868.
spiracy, 146, 152-8,' 164-6, 426' Bakers' union, 49, 444.
leaders jailed for contempt of court: Baltimore & Ohio railroad, !M.
151-8, 164, 166-7; criticized by Barnes. J. Mahlon, 2""". 268-4.
Federal Investigating Commission, 268-9,272,278,295,810-1.
156; Debs mentions sacrifices for Baur. Arthur, 205-6. 812, 885, 410,
160, 859; routine of leaders whil; 411, 422.
jailed at Woodstock, 168-70' at- Baur. John Jacob. 85-6.
tempts to rebuild, 172, 178-8i; ef- Baur. Mrs. John Jacob, 85, 61 88S
fects of its destruction, 181-8 192 411, 414,
241; merges into Baur. Oscar, Jr., 298-9
195; not a dual untan, 257-8; Debs' Bell Syndicate 42S 429.
503 ,
604 INDEX
Bellamy, Edward, 71-2, 97. 168, 200,
228, 801, 818, 816.
Belmont, August, U8.
Bemon, Allen L., 884,887.
Bentall, J. 0., 4l!8.
Berger, Victor L., 178, 188, 192,194-6,
197-9, 200, 210-11, 214, 219, 221,
288, 240-1, lU4, 269, 260, 262-4.
274. 296, 809, 811, 842,
849, 860, 894, 898, 406, 4io, 468.
Berkman, Alexander, 94, 892.
Beveridge, Albert J., 190-L
Bible, 10, 899.
Bicknell, George, 299.
Bisbee, Ariz., strike of 1917,846,861,
860.
Black, John C., 166.
Bland, Richard, 188.
Blatchford, Robert, 168.
Bloor, Ella Reeve (Mother), 292-8,
898.
Bly, Nellie, 170.
Bolsheviks of Russia, 8lU, 829, 8S8,
848-9, 866, 868, 869, 882, 888, 889,
894. 896, 898, 412-8, 419, 480,
431-2, 488-9, 446.
Bosch, Alfred, 888-9.
Boston & Maine railroad, 128.
Boudin, Louis B" 468.
Boyce, Ed, 198, 216, 221.
Bradstreefs, 98, 164.
Branstetter, Otto, 269, 406-7, 412,
429-80, 481-2, 489.
Brennan, John, 139.
Brewer, George D., 427.
Brewery workers' union, 92, 219.
Brooklyn Elevated Railway strike of
1887, 66. .
Broun, Heywood, 268, 877-8, 468.
Browder, Earl, 489-40.
Brown, John, 8, 168, 202, 266, 282,
287,828,878,446.
Brown, William M., 847-8.
Browne, Waldo R., 449.
Bryan, William Jennings, 188, 19(}-2,
200, 206, 211, 262, t72-8, 276, 284,
882, 449.
Joseph R.. 66, 91, 168.
Buffalo switchmen's strike of 1892,
81, 84, 89, 114, 182, 168, 182.
Building trades' unions, 49, 848.
Burleson, Albert S., 400.
Burns, Robert, 26.
Bums, William, 196, 197, 204. 241.
Business unionism, 87, 49. 99, 220,
266-8,461.
Byrne, MkhaelJ .. 899, 428.
CABIN Creek, W. Va., strike of 1913,
820-1,886.
Cahan, Abe, lUO.
Caldwell, Henry C., 102.
Callery, Phil H., 268.
Calumet, Mich., strike of 1918, 826.
Canton, Ohio, speech by Debs, 1918,
858-9, 860, 862, 866-7.
Carey, James F .. 214.
Carmack, Edward W., 260.
Carnot, Sadi, 128.
Carpenters' union, 49, 219.
Carwardine, William H., 108, 109.
110, 118, 117.
Catholic Church, 6, 68-9, 188, 806,
899,428.
Cedar Rapids federation of the Rail-
road Brotherhoods, 90-1.
Challenge, 448.
Chaplin, Ralph, 484, 444-6.
Chase, John, 268.
Chautauqua Society, 197, 228.
Chicago & Eastern TIlinois railroad,10.
Chicago & Erie railroad, 128, US.
Chicago & Galena railroad, 22.
Chicago & Northwestern railroad,
78-6, 182-8.
Chicago American, 211.
Chicago, Burlington & Quincr. rail-
road, 129; Burlington strike of
1888, 66-8, 169.
Chicago Chranick. 169, 176, 282.
Chicago Daily Newa, 486, 444.
Chicago Evening POid., 142-8.
Chicago ElJening Pres8, 174.
Chicago Federation of Labor, 128.
128, 144-6, 176,400.
Chicago Herald, 126.
Chicago InteT.{)cean, 142.
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul rail-
road, 126, 166.
Chicago stockyards strike of 1886,49.
Chicago Timu, 46, 142, 160.
Chicago Tribune, 94, 126-6, 180, 142,
160, 166, 168, 178, 246.
Children's Crusade for Amnesty, 428.
Christenson, Parley P., 407.
Christian Science ManiJor, 408, 481.
ChriBtian Socialist Fellowship, 268,
810.
Cigarmakers' union, 49, 219.
Cincinnati Enquirer, 169.
Civic Federation of Chicago, 109, 216.
Civil War, 7-8, 10, 18, 486.
C1aessens, August, 488-4, 444, 462-8.
Clark, Buster, 4lU-6.
Qark, Edgar E .. 160.
INDEX
Cltz8a Struggle, 88'l-8.
Clay, Henry, 870.
Cleveland, Grover, 09, 87, 89, H8,
180-'l, 184-7, 140, 144, 148, !lil,
104, 16'l, 168, 187-8, 19'1.
Cleveland Citizen, ~ 9 .
Cleveland Plain Dealer, 174,800,859,
860,879.
Clothing Workers, Amalgamated, 407.
See Needle Trades' unions.
Coal strike of 1897, 196-7; of 1919,
895-6.
Cobb, Frank I., 844-
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, strike of 189CZ,
88-9, 9'l, 114, 18'l, 16'l, 168, 18'l,
198, 'l14; of 1899, 'l40.
Collier's Magazine, 849.
Columbian Exposition of 1893 in
Chicago, 98-9.
Coming Nation, 178, 'l00.
Commons, John R., 9'l, 114.
Communist Labor Party, 898-0,
897-,8,406.
Communist Party: formation in 1919,
898-0; Debs' views on, 897-8;
practical illegality of, 404; Debs
refuses conditional support from,
406; Debs' evaluation of, in 19'11,
419-'l0; forms Workers Party, ~ ;
relations with Debs after 191,
481-8, 487, 488-40, 440-8, 456.
Communist (Third) International,
894, 419-W, 487.
Comrade, 448.
Ccmaervator, 'l9'l.
Cook County, TIl., Jail, 10'l-8, 161,
178,4'l'l.
Cooke, Jay, & Co., 16.
Coolidge, Calvin, 404.
Co-operative Colony of Liberty Jail,
168.
Co..operative Commonwealth, Broth-
erhood of, 198, 194, 190, 197-9.
Co-operative Dinner Club, 'l28-9.
CorneiUe, Pierre, 9, 17.
Cox, Ben, 206.
Cox, James M., 401, 408.
Cox, Jesse, 199.
Coxey, Jacob S., 114, 188.
Credit Mobilier, 16.
Cregier, DeWitt C., 188.
Cripple Creek, Col., strike of 1894,
'l14,870.
Cunne&, William A., 86'l, 860.
Current Histmy Magazine, 448.
Curry, Mabel D., 4010 ..
CurtiS, Jennie, 117.
DARROW, Clarence, becomes ARU
attorney, 18'l-8; and People's
Party, 168; defends ARU leaders.
164-6, 178, 188; Democratic nomi-
nee for Congress, 190-1; speaks in
Terre Haute, ~ attorney for
Haywood, U8; and McNamaza
trial, 800; services refused by Debs,
86'l; tries to win amnesty for Debs,
400-1,407,408.
Daugherty, HaE".Y M., 407, 408, 41'l.
Debs, Emma, (Mrs. C. O. Maillaux),
sister of Eugene, 11, 81, 69, 147,
157, 160, 'l04, 819.
Debs, Eugene V.: ancestry, 4, 'l5;
influenced by Victor Hugo, 6, 14,
17, 68, 168, 19'1, 'l61, 80l, 887-8,
888, 42'l; 'childhood, 6-11; religion,
6-7. 10, 68-9, 'l66, 'l87, 847, 899,
4'l6-7, 409; influenced by John
Brown, 8, 108, W'l, 'loo, 8'l, 'l87,
808, 828, 878, 440; education, 8-10,
I1J.-6, 17, 'l5; influenced by revo-
lutionary traditions of Europe and
America, 8, 9, 20-6, 71-'l, 74, 19'1,
!W'l, 280, 28'l, 801, 80S, 804, 870;
works as railroader, 11-9, 'l89, 'l41,
801; relations with Theodore Debs,
H-8, 'l5, 81, 8'l, 100, 'l'l5, 277-8,
'l89, 819-'l0, 880, 887, 899-400,
44'l; and neighbors in Terre Haute,
H-8, 10, 28-80, 4'l; as a craftsman,
18, !e.i-6, 'l'l5-6; as a cook, IS, 'l'l9,
286; influenced by parents, 18-4,
'lo, 40, 68, 68, 147, 170, 180, 194,
'l20, 'l'l9, 'l48-9, 874; literary tastes,
14, 10, 17, 19, 'l5, 68, 7'l, SO, 168,
'l0'l, 'l'l6, 'l9'l, 880-1, 88'l, 888-9,
4'l0-6, 486, 406; reliance on rauk
and file, 16-7, 79, 101, ~ 808, 80'l,
860-'l, 880-'l, 886, 897, 480-1;
relations witb workingmen, 17, 19,
81-8,08,61,70,82-3, 178, 180, 188,
194, 264-5, 'l70-1, 'l70, 'l80, 287-9,
'l92-8, 80'l,880, 888,896-7, 408-9;
works as billing clerk, 18, 'lO-8; and
Neb'l'O problem, 19, 4'l-8, 68, 68,
'l59-6i; a sentimental personality,
19, 'l9-80, 6'l, 174-5, 'loo, 'l94,
817-'l4, 441, 444-0; use of liquor,
19, 08-4, 63, 140-6, 164, 'loO-I,
287-9,866,878-0,898, 40'l-8, 409;
as a scholar, 19,68,91-2,801,817,
872-3, 896-7, 446; in Vigo Lodge of
BLF, 21-8,80; and force and vio-
lence, 'l4, 84, 106, 128, 1'l4, 128,
140, 148, 204-0, 807-8, 827, 896,
INDEX
402; 88 an orator, 24-8, so, 9S,
10H, 116,226-6,229,266-7, ,871,
877, 458; friendship with Riley,
27,-g, 68-4, 6'l-8, SO, 100, 171, 178,
!tOO, 889; influenced by Ingersoll,
i6--7, 68, SO: opposes strikes, 28-4,
84; supports woman suffrage. 27,
48, 224-6, !l99-800, 808-4, 408-4;
prominence in Democratic Party,
is-80, 85, 41-8, 416; City Clerk of
. Terre Haute, !!9-82. 89, 821; and
'prostitution, 29, 821-8; secretary-
of BLF, 80-4, SIi, 40, 69,
S2; editor of LooomatiH Fif'emen's
Magazine, 81, 88, 8S, 89, 40, 116, 64,
70, 74-5, 79, S(}-2, 84, 89-91, 94,
96, 99; and arbitration, 84, SO,
148-50; largely responsible for
growth of BLF, 81-8, 89, 46-110,
52-8,69,77, 801; courtship of Kate
Metzel, 811-7, 40; contact sliRht
with AFL, 87-S, 41; promotes oilier
unions, 8S-40; opposes militant
unionism, 84, 41, 54; promotes
unioll!3 in Terre Haute, 88, 226-7;
serves in Indiana legislature. 41-8,
192; maniage to Kate Metzel,
48-4; clashes with P. M. Arthur,
46, 5S, Ilil, 169-60; calls for joint
action by Railroad Brotherhoods,
47, 55, 5S, 64-S, 72-S4; attacks
Pullman, 47-S; converted to busi-
ness unionism, 49-60, 59, 266-6;
and Haymarket episode, 5(}-2,
98-4, 202, 246, 247; and Burlington
strike of ISSS, 55-S; denounces
Pinkertons, 57; campaigns for
Cleveland, 59, S9; defends strikes,
60, SO; childlessness, 61; plans
new home, 61-2 affection for
children, 6'l, 2S0, 28/i-{1, 875,
42S; spends leisure at home, 68;
dislikes writing. and dual
unionism, 65-7. 78, 79, 21S-21,
255-S, 29S; leader of Supreme
Council, 66-S, 72-S1; denounces
religious prejudice, 6S-9; projects
labor journal, 69-70, SI: opposes
of 69-70;
offered JOb by AmerICan Press
Assn .. 70, 160; and political reform
in IS90, 70; influenced by Laurence
Gronlund, '11-2. Ili6; influenced by
Edward Bellamy, 71-2, 168, 2Ot,
U8, 801; influenced by Utopian
socialism, 71-2, 91, 99, 156, 168,
19/H}; and Debs Publishing Co.
80-1, 91, 228; advised by GOlDpers
to stay in BLF, SI; and Buffalo
strike, 81. 84; calls for labor unity
and political action, 89-00, 97-8,
115; helps to found ARU, 91-3, 96;
criticized by Gompers, 95-6; con-
tributes to growth of ARU, 95,
97-8, 101; influenced by Marxism,
. 99, 1M, 178, IS8, 192, 287, 287,
887, 446, 451. 459; denounces
labor injunction, 102, 177-8, 484;
expert management of Great North-
ern strike, 108-7. 808; urges delay
in Pullman strike, 112; investigates
dispute in Pullman, 112-4; keynote
speech at ARU convention, 114-5;
opposes boycott of Pullman cars,
117-S, 119; outlines strategy for
boycott, 120; drafted for re-election
as president, 120; asks aid from
other unions, 121-2, 124,144; warns
against violence and disruption of
mails, 128, 124, 128, 140, 148;
responsible for direction of boycott,
184, 140, 146-7; attacked by
newspapers, 180, 142, 145, 154-5,
180; hires Darrow, 182-8; attacks
use of Army, 187-8; seeks to rally
ARU members, 14(}-1; arrested
for conspiracy, 146; actions de-
fended by Kate Debs, 147-S; seeks
to end boycott, 148-9, IliO; asks
sympathetic strike by A1!'L, 149;
supports People's Party, 151, 162-8,
170, 174, 187, 188-92; jailed for con-
tempt of court, 151-8; appeals to
his conscience to justify his actions,
Ili8, 881, S6S, 86S: testifies to
Federal Commission,
155-6; attacks poliCies of BLF at
1894 convention, 156-61; sentenced
to six months in jail for contempt,
164; t al for conspiracy dismissed,
164-6; jailed at Woodstock, 167-76.
attacks Federal judiciary, 164,
177, 291, 808-4, 884; a celebrity
while in jail, 169-70, 178-4; visited
by socialists, 178-4; honored on
release from jail, 175-7; pays all
ARU debts, 179, lSI, 822; tries to
revive ARU, 17S-81: and Abraham
Lincoln, 188, 280, 270, 287, 872-8,
400; refuses to run for President
in 1896, 188-90; summary of
career to IS96, 191-8; becomes
socialist, aids WFM at
Leadville, 198--4; supports coloni-
INDEX 507
zation, 197; aids UMW in
West Virginia., 196-7; theory oC
business cycles, 197; deserts coloni-,
zation for class conscious politics,
197-9, 200-1; opposes all reform
pa.1'ties, 199, !lO2, !l5S; asks aid
from Rockefeller, !l01; opposes
&anish-American War, 2OW;
eltect of socialist views on his
personal friends, W4-6, !lO1-!l;
friendship with Reynolds,
!1!l, !l!l7, !l!l9, !l8!l, 298, 448;
attacks Rochester faction and
DeLeon, !l10; runs for President in
1900, !l08-1!l; shirks positions of
leadership, !lI8, !l80-1, !l44,
808, 8S6; advocates class conscions,
industrial unionism, !l14-6,
284-7, !l40-!l, U6-S, !l97-8, 88!l,
885; helps to found American Labor
Union, !lIS-21; careless of precise
truth, !l!W-l, !lU-6, !l41, 817-!lO,
868, 4!l6; and lecturing, !l!l8-4,
!!!l7; runs for President in 19M,
280-8; supports IWW in opposition
to right-wing Socialists, 287--44;
defends Moyer and Haywood,
!l45-55, 289-90; and the Appeal to
Rea3on, !lOO-I, !l46-7, !M9-50,
289-94, 808-4, 810, 8!l!l; and death,
!l48-9, 480, 485, 449; clashes with
Roosevelt, !l51-8; quits IWW,
U5-6; runs for President in 1908,
!l6!l-S4; clashes with reform wing
of Socialist Party, !l68-4, !l71-!l,
!105-S, 807, 809-11, 881-!l, 88S-4.
885, 849-50, 857, 897-B, 488-9;
clashes with anarcho-syndicalists
in Socialist Party, !l95-6, !lOB,
807-B, 88!l; refuses to remove from
Terre Haute, routine in Girard,
!lS5-B; de des city-dwellers, !lB6;
and prohibition, 286--7; defends
Warren, 808-4, 810; in-
fluenced by personal friendships in
his political decisions, !l95, 346,
89B, 487, 44S; and immigration,
!!97; helps young writer, 8OO-!l;
defends McNamara brothers,
804-6; runs for President in 19U,
8OS-1!l, 8!l4; and Wayland's suicide,
8U-4; and feud between Kate
and Theodore Debs. 819-20; in-
vestigates Cabin Creek strike,
8!W-l, 886; retires, 8!l!l; and
NaticmJZl Rip-Ba:w, 8!l5, 828, 8!l9,
888, 840, 849, 858, 4!l6, m; bMis
of anti-war vieWli. 8!l4, 8!l6, 8!l8,
880, 840; denounces invasion' of
Mexico, in 1914, 8!l5-B, in 1916,
888; and patriotism, 828, 8!l9, 881,
889, 858; seeks to. prevent U. S.
involvement in Workl War, 828-40;
not a pacifist. 881, 858; attacks
pro-warsoci.alists of 881-!l:
84B-9, 85!l, attacks IVVVV. 88!l,
ruus for Congress in 1916, 884-B;
refuses to denounce right-wing
Socialists, 84!l, 846, 406; angered
by infringement of civil liberties,
845. 850-!l; follows equivocal policy,
845-8; calla for world revolution,
849; motives in giving Canton
speech, 858-4, 408; Canton speech,
858-9, 860, 86!l, 865-7; defends
Russian Revolution, 855, 88!l-8,
896, 898, 401, W, 489, 454; in-
dicted under Espionage Act,
859-60; inspired by anti-war move-
ment, 854, 860..J.l, 8Bo-!l; regards
conviction and imprisonment 88
certain, 860, 86!l-8, 866, 86B;
Cleveland trial, 86!l-77, 428, 448;
compliments prosecution, 865, 869,
874, 879-80; explaius opposition to
war, 868-71; angry at prosecutor,
878-.4; convicted and sentenced.
878, 875-6; predicts t umph of
socialism, 874-6; summary of
career to 191B, 877-9; Supreme
Court upholds conviction, 888-4;
travels to Moundwille, 884-7:
finds contentment at Moundsville,
887-9; transferred to Atlanta, 8B9:
relation to other inmates, 890-8,
W-8, 4!l4-5; calla for united
revolutionary party, 896-S; runs
for President in 1920, 89S-404;
the campaign for his release, 400-1.
404-9. 4U-8; attacks Lea.8ue of
Nations, 401; clashes with Wilson,
40l-!l. 405-6; and Communists.
406. 419-20. 481-8. 487. 488-40.
445-8. 456; al:t!wks dictatorship
in Russia. 412-8. 481-2; reactions
to his pardon, 418-4; loses citizen-
ship, 415, 440--1, 456; triumphant
return to Terre Haute, 416-9;
8llSJ)eIlds judgment on political
affiliation, 419-20, 4!l9-80; attacks
penal system, 4!l!l-8, 4!lO, 488;
complains about own cOndition,
4!l1, 4!l7-8, 480; calls forindustrial
unionism, 4!l6, 484, 489-40, 4tJO.-1;
li08 INDEX
and coarse humor, 427; at Lindlahr
sanitarium. 481-6; rejected as
speaker by BLF convention, 484--1S;
announces adherence to Socialist
Party, 486-7; not in full accord
with Socialist Party, 488-9; tours
for Socialist Party, 440-1, 449,
451-8; extremely ill, 892-8, 419,
gives library to Rand School,
442-8; becomes chairman of
Socialist Party, 446; and election
of 1924, 446-8; contrasts Altgeld
and Bryan, 449; defends Sacco
and Vanzetti, 451-2, 4t3, 451H1;
and American Appeal, 458-4; takes
wife to Bermuda, 454-5; final illness
and death, 456-8; summary of
career, 458-9.
Debs, E. V .. Publishing Co., SO-I, 91,
228, 225, 819.
Debs, Eugenie, sister of Eugene, 11,
81.
Debs FreeJqm MooDdy,
Debs, Gertrude Toy, wife of Theo-
dore, 199--200, 465.
Debs, Jean Daniel, father of Eugene,
8-11,14-5,20,21,25,81,86,40,68,
147,170,192,194,205,225,229-80,
U8-9, 261, 292, 299, 82S.
Debs, .Katherine Metzel, wife of
Eugene: her character in 1882,
85--7; attitude toward social reform,
40; becomes engaged to Debs, 40;
marriage to Debs, 48-4; effects of
solitude on, 5i-8, 56, 61, 69;
dislike of Debs' use of liquor, 58-4;
her sterility, 61; as a housekeeper,
61-2;.and Debs, M; manages Debs
Publishing Co., 91, 22S, 819; new
home of, 61-2; entertains Riley
in 1898, 100; arrives in Chicago
during Pullman boycott, 147-8;
aids' Debs in Woodstock, 171Hl;
attitude toward socialism,. 204-5;
management of finances, 58, 61-2,
206; edits Debs' speeches, 221H1,
817; at Co-operative Dinner Club,
229; nature of Debs' letters to,
225, 282, 418; tries to save Debs'
health, 284, 284, 285, 292, 299, 819,
82!!, 860, 422, 442; brother dies,
248; sole beneficiary of Debs' will,
249; missed by Debs, !i!5O; attitude
toward children, 298, 98; espouses
socialism, 299, 8!i!3; _ advocates
woman su&rage, 299-800; feud with
Theodore 'Debs, receives
tributes from Debs, 205, 822-5.
885. -421-2; urges Debs to retire,
886-7; supports Debs' views in
1916, 886-7; ill in 1917, 888;
possible influence on Debs in World
War, 847; not present at Debs'
trial, 868; sees Debs leave for
885; preserves letter attack-
mg Debs, 409; fails to visit Debs
in prison, 409-10; rejects aid from
NatWrud Rip-Saw, 410-2; amused
at Debs, 425; called snobbish, 421;
chides Debs, 427-8; illness of,
422, 442, 458-4.
Debs Legend, 100, 267-8, 287-9,
294, 877-9.
Debs, Louise, sister of EUKene, 6.
Debs, Marguerite Marie Bettrich
(Daisy), mother of Eugene, H,
10,12-8,25,88--4, 86, 40, 147,170.
194, 205, 248, 289, 874.
Debs, Marie Marguerite (Mrs. John
G. Heinl), sister of Eugene, 6, 15,
204.
Debs Rebellion, 108, 129, 151, IDS.
See Pullman boycott.
Debs, Theodore, brother of Eugene.
11-18,25,81,82,86,40,48, os, 100,
108, U2, 127, 184, 147, 157, 160,
176, 199-200, 205, 228, 220, !i!7 4,
276-8, 284, 289, 801-2, 8 19--iO, 847,
880, 885, 887, 897, 408,
404, 410, 420, 427, 429, 442, 449,
465, 457, 458.
Declaration of Independence, 5UD.
DeLeon, Daniel: quoted, 1; biogra-
phy, 96-7; praises ARU, 97;
characterized, 182-8; attacks
colonization plan, 194; supported
by Debs, !i!02; splits SLP, 208;
attacked by Debs, 210, 256; c0-
operates with Debs in IWW,
241-8; praised by Debs,
881; and Communists, 420; also
212,882.
DeLeon, Solon, i48.
Dell, Floyd, 818.
Democratic Party, 28, 41-8, 58-9,
71, 151, 162-8, 187-92,211--2,278,
886-7, 401, 416.
Denver & Rio Grande railroad, 100.
Denver Post, 824.
Department of Justice, U. S., 857,
859.
Depew, Chauncey M., 190.
Depression, of 1865, 100n, 18; of
1878,16-18; of 1885, 44-5; of 1898,
INDEX
609
90-1,98-9, lOS, 11S, 161, IS7, 191;
of 1907, of 1919", sss; of
1920, 441, 461.
Detroit Fru PrU8, 196,
Disabled American Veterans, 4540.
Dixon, A. C., ISO.
Dooley, Mr. See Dunne, }'inley Peter.
Dnal unionism: among the Railroad
Brotherhoods, 66-7, 78, 79; and the
ARU, 96-6, 149, U7-S; and the
ST & LA, ISS; and the American
Labor Union, and the
IWW. !l96-44, U6-S; attacked by
Debs in 1910,
Duke,
Dumas, Alexander,
Dundy, Elmer S.,
Dunne, Finley Peter,
EAST St. Louis race riot of lIH7, S46,
S61. .
East St. Louis strike of ISS6, 46.
Eastern.railroad, US.
Eastman, Max, S64, S67,
Eckert, George, 168-9, 176,
See Woodstock jail.
Edwards, A. S., 179.
Egan, John M., 146.
Ehrmann, Max, 800-1, SSS.
Eight-hour day, 44--6, 49, 60-1, 70,
SO, SI,
Elderkin, Thomas J., 176.
Election, of 188S, 6S-9; of S7,
S9; of IS96, of 1900, WS-l'l,
284, 464; of 19M. of 1905,
994; of 1910, 807; of
288, SS4; of 1916, 884-7;
of
446-S.
Ely, Richard T., 109.
Emporia Gautte, 41S.
Engdahl, J. Louis, SS6.
Erwin, Charles, W., 417-S.
Espionage Act of 1917, amended 1915,

Estes, George, 287.
Everybody'8 MagaYine,
F ABlhN socialism, 16S.
Farmer-Labor Party, 407.
Federal Investigating Commission of
IS94, lOS, 109, 14S,
Federated Trades & Labor Council.
See American Federation of Labor.
Federation of Railroad Brotherhoods,
47, 66, 68, 64--a, See also
Cedar Rapids Federation and Su-
preme Council.
}'ield, 147, 171-2.
Foster, William Z., S96, 4SS, 489,
446-S.
French Revolution of 17S9, 4. 21, S9S.
Frick, Henry C., S7-9, 940.
GABIE, William F.,
Gaylord, W. a, 809.
General Managers Association, lIS,
12S, U4, 126, liB, IS7, 141,
146,166, 166,176.
General Nicholas,
George, Henry, 91, 96-7, lSi,
16S.
Gerber, Julius, S97.
Germer. Adolph, 8W.
Gitlow, Benjamin, S96.
Goethe, Johann, 9, 19.
Goldman, Emma, 19S.
Samuel: of, 87;
philosophy of trade UniOnism, 87-S,
49, 50, 72; demands labor unity,
79; advises Debs to remain in BLF,
SI; opposes Populists, 91, 162-S;
describes formation of ARU, 96-6;
defends business unionism, 99;
analyzes Great Northern strike,
107; and Pullman boycott of IS94,
I'll, 144; protests against class
justice, 16S-4; and coal strike of
1897, 196; estranged from Debs,
204; co-operates with National
Civic Federation, and Lead-
ville strike of IS96, 198,
fights Socialists in AFL, 99,
267-S; fights IWW,
attacks Red Special, 27S; attacked
by Debs, SS6; supports World
War, 8S9-40; and Steel Strike of
1919, 996-6; visits Debs in prison,
407-S; calls Debs a publicity-seeker,
416; attacked by Debs, 4i!6; and
Socialist Party, 4S9.
Goodwin, Roy M., 196, 197,204, 241.
Gould, Jay, 70, 266.
Gould railway strike, of ISS6, 46, 66;
of ISS6, 49,
Great Northern strike of IS94: causes,
100-S; no violence or disruption of
mails, lOS, 104, 106-7; and Rail-
road Brotherhoods, 109-4; inter-
vention by governor of Minnesota..
104-6; arbitration urged by St.
Paul Chamber of Commerce, 106-6;
outcome of, 106-7, 169-60; analysis
by Gompers, 107; aid received from
lilO INDEX
non-members. 114; ARU lucky in.
118; not publicized in LoootrwtitJ8
Magaai1Ul. 157; Debs
recalli. 801. 80s.
Greenback Party. 71.
Greenbaum, Leon, 218, 2<U.
Gregory, Stephen S., 164-6.
Gronlund, Laurence, 71--2, 156.
Grosscup, Peter S., 18()-1. 182, 185.
186, 146. 164-6, 818.
Guthrie. William N.,
HAEssLER, Carl, 484-
Hagerty, ThomllB J., 215-6, 287, 288,
241,244.
Hanford, Benjamin, 280, 264, 274,
iSO,880.
Hanna, Marcus A., 191-2, 217-8, 220,
221.258.
Hannahan, John J., 54. 77, 78, 100.
Hapgood, Norman, 408.
Hapgood. Powers, 421.
Hardie, Keir. 178-4. 192. 824.
Harding. Warren G . 401, 408,.407,
408, 412, 418, 415.
Harper, Ida Husted, 2"1, 29,81,48,44.
Harper, ThomllB, 29, 81, 58, 182.
Harper's Weekly, 94.
Harriman, Job, 208-11, 262, 805-6.
Harris, Frank, 889, 425.
Harrison, Benjamin, 59, 87-9. 162.
Harrison, Carter H 99, 152.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 828, 824.
Hayes, MaxS., 208-10, 2S6, 288, 289,
262,295.
Hayes, Rutherford B., 24.
Haymarket bombing of 1886, 50--2,
98-4, 188, 202, 246, 247, 255.
Haywood, William D., 215-6,
287-9, 244-56, 268, 269, 288. 290,
295, 808, 882, 842, 858, 866, 870,
878.
Heath, ji'rederic, 199, 210, 214, 219,
281, 240-1, 262.
Heathcote, Thomas, 112, 151.
Heinl, John G., 15, 204.
Henley, William Ernest, 456.
Henry, Patrick, 202, 258, 869.
Higgins. Jimmie, 28()-1, 288, 269, 274.
295,880-1.
Hill, James J . 102-7,8OS.
Hill. John A., 66, 72.
Hillquit, Morris, 208-10, 219, 221,
289, 244, 258, 262-4, 281, 295, 297,
809-11, 880, 888, 841-2, 894, 406,
420,440-1,448,447,456.
Hoehn, G. A., 197.
Hogan, Dan, 270.
Hogan, James, 195, 197-8, 204, !U1.
Hollingsworth, J. H., 886.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 883-4.
Homestead, Pa., strike of 1892, 87-9,
1I4, 182, 168, 182.
Hopkins, John P., 1I9, 180, 188, 148,
150.
Horthy, Admiral. 454.
Hourwich, Isaac, 100-7.
Houston Chronicle, 822.
Howard, George W., 65, 66, 67, 72, 77,
79, 92. 98, 95-6, 108, 1M, 106, 112,
1I9, 122, 126, 184, 146, 169, 2M,
241,879.
Hubbard, Elbert, 448.
Hugo, Victor, 6,9,14,17,68,168,192,
261, 801, 887-8, 888, 402, 422.
Hulman, Anton, 206.
Hulman, Herman, 20, 22.
Hulman & Cox grocery house, 18.
2()-28.
Hynes, William, 47.
ILLINOIS Central railroad, 124-5, 155.
llIinois Federation of Labor, 128-4.
ImpossibilisIn, 212-8, 288, 894.
Indiana Federation of Labor, 450-1.
Indiana legislature of 1885, 42-8,
192.
Indiana State Teachers College, 228.
Indianapolis Journal, 28. _
Industrial unionism: early examples,
92; theARU, 92-8,158, 18HiI, 192;
a central objective of Debs, 20 2, 879,
406; an issue in Socialist Part}' 214-
5; and the American Labor Union,
218-21, 286-7; and the IWW, 286-
44, 255-8; Debs' program wins
partial endorsement by Socialist
Party, 297-8, 808; new labor
federation advocated by Debs in
1915, 881-2, 885, 888, 889-40; and
railroad strike of 1922, 484; Debs
co-operates with Trade Union Edu-
cational League, 487, 489-40, 445;
advocated by Debs in 1925, 450-1.
Industrial Workers of the World,
286-44, 246, 255-7, 295, 881, 882,
845, 849, 81H, 858, 860, 870, 489.
Ingersoll, Robert G., 26-7, 68, 80,
145-6, 191, 206, 889.
Intercollegiate Socialist Society, 268.
International Harvester Co., 281.
Intrn'fUltUmol Socialist RmMw, 220,
288, 242, 260, 264, 268, 296, 297,
827,848,851,858, 442-8.
INDEX 511
Iron and Steel Workers, Amalgamated
Association of, 87-8.
Irons, Martin, 124.
Irwin, William, 182.
JEFFEBSON, Thomas, 280.
Jesus, 10, 266, 267, 280, 287, 899,
426-7, 448, 459.
Jones, (Mother) M y, 228-9,287-9,
820,886.
KAIsER Wilhelm, 858.
Kangaroo socialists. See Rochester
faction.
Kansas City & Fort Scott railroad,
129.
Karsner, David, $84-6, 888, 428-9,
486,448.
Kautsky, Karl, 178, 801.
Kavanagh, :li'rancis B., 865.
Keefe, Dan J., 217.
Keliher, Sylvester, 67, 98, 112,
122, 126, 146, 195, 198, 204.
Kelley, Florence, 158, 175.
Kerscher, John, 487.
Kerr, Ch les H., 268.
Kirkpatrick, George R., 884, 887.
Kiwanis clubs, 441.
Knights of Labor, 87,49-50, 56,90,
98, 115, 128, 144, 148, 154, 162.
Kolchak, A. V., 401.
Kollontai, Alexandra, 886.
Kopelin, Louis, 294.
Kruttschnitt, Julius, 218.
Ku Klux Klan, 896.
LABADIE, Joseph A., 228-4, 242,888,
447.
LaIxYr and Freedom, 874.
Labor Defense Council, 448, 456.
Labor Herald, 440.
Labor injunction, 58, ,101-2, 180-8,
184, 151, 166-7. 177, 181-2, 196,
895-6, 484. 451.
LaFollette, Robert M.. 446-8.
Lamont, Daniel S., 185.
LaMonte, Robert Rives. 284.
L kin, James, 386.
Leach. Joshua, 21, 28.
Leadville, Col., strike of 1896, 198-4.
214, 220.
League of Nations, 401, 408.
Lease, Mary Ellen. 187.
Ledoux. Urbain. 415-6.
Lee, Algernon, 2M, 458.
Leffingwell, Samuel J., 88.
Left-Wing Manifesto of 1919, 894.
Lenin. Nikolai, 824, 869, 882-8, 898-
482, 488, 488.
Lewis, John L., 895-6.
Lewis, Sinclair, 486, 457.

See Mass68.
Liebknecht, KarL 829.
Lincoln, Abraham, 188, 230,267,270,
287,881,870,872-8,400.
Lindlahr Sanitarium, 481-6,488,444-
8,456-7.
Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 98, 158, 168,
168,178.175,177,188-90,198,196,
196, 258, 866, 448.
Lloyd. William Bross. 866.
Locomotive Engineers, Brotherhood
of, 2l!. 24. 88-9, 45-7. 55-8. 65-7,
78, 90, 121, 141, 151, 159-60. 240.
Locomotive Firemen, Brotherhood of:
prior to 1877. 21-5; Debs becomes
leader of. 80-1; growth as fraternal
society. 81-4, 85, 87-45; growth as
trade union, 45-55: calls first strike,
55; loses Burlington strike of 1888,
55-60: and the Supreme Council,
64-84: Debs resigns as officer, 81-8,
148, !t56. 801, 881: initiates Cedar
Rapids federation, 90; and Great
Northern strike, 108-4; and Pull-
man boycott, 12'l: Debs attacks pol.
icies of, 156-61; and conciliation of
employers, 22-8.84,41. 81-4, 108-
4, 1'l2, 159-60, 162; Debs recalls ex-
periences in, 428; Debs keeps gift
from, 426; Debs rejected as speaker
by convention, 484-5.
LocorrwtifH! Fireman's M agtllline, 24.
80,81. 87-40. 48. 46, 47.49. 60-2,
55.56.68,68.64,69,70,71,72,74-
114-5.
157. 180. 215. 'lOll, 817, ,442. SIJ8
Eugene V. Debs.
London. Jack, 182, 'l68. 889,425-6.
London, Meyer, 850.
LJoking Backward. See Edward Bel-
lamy.
Los Angeles Record, 457.
Los Angeles Ti'llUlS, 181, 282, 804-5.
Louisville & Nashville railroad, 55,
159.
Lovejoy, Elijah, 869.
Lovejoy, George, 144.
Ludlow, Col., strike of 1914, 826-8,
880,870.
Lusitania sinking, 828, 829.
MAcARTHUR, Robert S., 180.
612 INDEX
Machinists' union, 848.
Madden, W. H., 124.
Maillaux. Mrs. C. Odilon. See Emma
Debs.
MoiJly, WillilUllo !l2L
MarkluuD, Edwin, !l26, SOI-!l.
Markle, Theodore, !l0.
Marseillaise, !l77, 8B6.
Marx, Karl. Marxism.
Marxism, 96-7, 99, 166, 178, IB2-8,
192, 196, !lS7, 275, 8Bl, 887, 402,
446, 461, 469.
MaalJea, 511, 818, 848, 549, 868, 574,
441. See Liberator.
Masters. Edgar Lee, 467.
Maurer, James H., 416.
May Day, 60, !l59, MH.
McBride, John, 121, 175.
McDonald, Dan, !lS7.
McGuire, Peter J., 5B, 7!l.
McHenry County Jail. See Woodstock
Jail.
McKeen, Frank. 206.
McKeen, Riley, 24, 29, 51,66,206.
McKinley, William, 191, 217.
McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, 87, 89.
McNamara, James R, 806-6.
McNamara, John J., 506-6.
McNamara case of 1911, 504-6, 515.
McParlan, James, 246.
Medical &mew af RevUno8, 486.
Mencken, Henry L., 426.
Meredith, George, !l!l8.
Metal Workers, United, !l57.
Metzel, Daniel, 56, !l48.
Michigan Southern railroad, !l!l.
Milchrlst, Thomas, 1!l4-6, 1!l6, 180,
,156, 187, 16.5.
Miles, Nelson A., 186.
Miller, Clyde R., 864-6, 569, 566, 867,
579-80, 408.
Milwaukee Leader, 5!l1.
Milwaukee Vorwaeru, 175,200.
Mine Workers, United, 49, 92, 196-7,
!l19, !l8S, 8!lO, '58!l, 848, 896-6, 400,
4!l1.
Miners, Western Federation of, 9!l,
198, !l14-!lI, !lS6-7, !l46, 266, !l96"
5!l6-7, 55!l, 4!l8. '
Miners' MagMine, 248, !lB0.
Mitchell, John, !l16, ln8.
Mooney, Tom, 567-8.
Moore & Langen Printing Co., 51, 58,
179.
Moore, Mark,88.
Moore, Thaddeus, 179.
Morgan, John Pierpont, 2IB.
Morgan, Thomas J., 14B, 17S-4, 181,
19!1-8.
Morgan, WiIlilUllo 40.
Morris, William, !l00.
Morrison, Frank, !lIB, 416.
Moskowitz, A. W., 869,
Moundsville, W. Va., prison, 887-9,
891, 410, 4!l!l, 4!lS, 445.
Moyer, Charles, !lS7, !lS8, !l44-M.
Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone cage of
1906-1907, 244-66, !l65, !lB9, 290,
506-6, 826, 57B.
Mulford, E. M., 146.
Mussolini, Benito, 464.
Nation, 549.
National Civic Federation, !lI6-B; !l!lO,
!lS6, !l4!l, 268.
NatWnal Rip-Saw, 526, 8!lB, 5!l9,888,
546,549,868,41O-I,4!l6,442.
Nationalist, 72, 448.
Needle trades' unions, 848, 459.
Negroproblem, 19,42-5,68,68,92-8,
116, 216-6, 217, 267-61, 846, 578,
896.
, Nelson, Knute, 104-6
New York Call, 268,888-4, 56S, 5B4,
597, 417, 4!lB, 486-7.
New York Daily Forward, 200, !lS9,
545.
New York City Elevated Railways,
47,169.
New York Morning Journal, 189.
New York Sun, 141, 188.
New York Tim68, 151, 146, 281.
New York Tribune, 164-6.
New York Worker, 266.
New York World, 146, 169,178,512,
844,40!l.
NewJ.X>rt News & Miasissippi Valley
raIlroad, 66.
Nineteenth Century Club of New
York,I97.
Norris, George W., 58!l, 540.
Northern Pacific railroad, 16, 169.
Nye, Edgar Wilson (Bill), !lB, 65.
OCCIDENTAL Literary Club, 26-B.
O'Hare, Frank P., 260-1, 268-4, 269,
826,588,560-1, 56S, 410-1, 417-B,
4!lB.
O'Hare, Kate Richards, 814; 525,844,
860-1, 568, 564, '862,566,570,878-
, 4, 594, 417, 4!l8.
Ohio & Missiasippi railroad, I, 67.
Olney, Richard, 126, 126, l!l8-81,
184-7, 141, 146, 161, 171, IBO.
INDEX 018
Oneal, James, 808,897, 4!l1.
Orchard, Harry, !l40.
Otis, Harrison Gray, lSI, !il82, SOH.
P A.INE, Thomas, !lo, !l6, 19!il, iO!!, SOl,
881.
Panhandle railroad, U4-0.
Palmer, A. Mitchell, 405.
Palmer Raids, 896, 404, 410.
Park. Holmes, 107.
Parker, Harry, !l74.
Parsons, Lucy, !il8S-9, MI.
Pearson's Magazine, 889.
Peffer, William A., 104.
Pennoyer, Sylvester, 164.
Pennsylvania railroad, !l8-4, 8!il-S, 40,
47.
People, 97,194, 190.
People's Party, 71, S9, 90, 91, 99. 110-

Ul.
Pettibone, George, 244-6.
Phelps, Erskine, 14S.
Phillips, Wendell, !n. 881.
Pillsbury, Charles, 106.
Pingree, Hazen Smith, 189-40, 14S.
Pinkerton detectives, !il4. 40, 07, 88.

Pittsburgh conference of ISSl, pre-
liminary to formation of AFL, 87.
Pollock, John C., 81S.
Poole. Earnest,
Populists. See People's Party.
Powderly. Terence V., 49, 7!l. 110.
Prevey, Marguerite, 847. Slio-6, 809.
878-4, 8S6, 89S. 410, 4!l0.
Progressive Party, 446-S.
Proletarian Party, 487.
Pullman, George M., 47-S, 70, 109.
110. lU, 116, 117, 11S, 187, 14!l-8.
100, 1M. 106, 166, 171.
Pullman, Illinois, 48, 10S-14, Ilia-I,
Ilio.
Pullman boycott of IS94: cause of
originalstrike, 10S-H; PulJIDILn em-
join ARU. 11 I; strike calJed
m Pullman. 11!l; strikers appeal to
ARU convention, 116-7; efforts of
ARU to negotiate settlement, 117.
lIlHJ; boycott voted by ARU con-
vention, 119; Debs' attitude toward
boycott, General Ma.n.agers
Association supports Pt.lhnan, 1!l1.
128, 1!l4. U6, I!lS, 187. 141; Rail-
road Brotherhoods oppose ARU.
141, 101;aIlARUlodgessup-
port boycott. U!l; use of strike-
breakers. U8. 1M; supported by
other unions. NS. 1!l7, 1!!8, 187,
144-0, 14S. 101, 108--4; violence and
disruption of ml'ils, 1!l8, W-O, 180-
S, 188-40, 148. 144, 104, 160; most
commercial news apers oppose. 128.
121i-6, ISO. 181, 189, 141-8, 104-0,
WS; Edwin Walker named special
Federal attorney, U6; effectiveness
of, 1!l8, 1!l7-S; use of U. S. Army,
129,180. IS4, 189-40.144, 104; the
injunction, 1!l9-S!l; ARU resolves to
ignore injunction. 18!l; Darrow
DaIl1ed ARU attorney for, IS!l-SS;
character of Federal deputy Ill&l'-
shals, 188--40; efforts to arbitrate,
14"-0, 14S, 149, IliO; ARU leaders
indicted for conspiracy, 146; Federal
intervention endorsed. by House of
Representatives, 146; AFL rejects
proposal of sympathetic strike, 14S-
ao; ARU leaders jailed, IIi 1; boycott
ends, 101; Report of Federal Inves-
tigating Commission, 1M-6;" effects
of defeat, 1M. 16S, 169-70, IS1-8,
19!1, 206. !lIli, !l06, S08, 461; con-
spiracy trial of ARU leaders,
86S; use of blacklist, lI8, 100, 17!l,
17S-S0, Debs ascribes defeat in
part to rejection of Negroes, !l09;
recalJed by Debs, 809, 870, 4!l6. 484.
QuEEN & Crescent railroad, 66-7.
RA.CINE, Jean Baptiste, 9, 17.
Railroad accidents, 17-18, !l!l, 40-1,
4!l,07.
Railroad Brakemen, Brotherhood of.
See Railroad Trainmen, Brother-
hood of.
Railroad Brotherhoods, 90, 91, 108,
107, 114. 116, 1!l7, 144, 149. 106-
61, 16!l. ISO, IS!l, 204, 889-40, 48i,
447. See Cedar Rapids federation;
Supreme Council; and the apecific
Brother hoods.
Railroad Conductors, Brotherhood of.
6Ii, 66, 67. 7!l-SO.
Railroad shop men's strike of 19!1!l,
484.
Railroad strike of IS77, !lS-4, 07,09,
184.
Railroad Trainmen. Brotherhood of,
8S-9, 64-S, 78-80, 81, 90, 1!l!l, 141,
ISO.
Railway Car Men, Brother hood of ,40,
67,90,97.
514
INDEX
Railway Conductors, Order of, 22, !l4,
88-9, 58, 65, 78, 78, 90, 104, 121-!l,
127.
Railway Se-rvioo Gazette, 72.
Railway Telegraphers, Brotherhood
of, 67, 78.
Railway Telegraphers, Order of, 67,
78,78,90.
Railway Timea, 101, 171, 178, 190,
195,442.
Railway Workers, United, 287.
Rand School of Social Science,
Ratchford, Michael D., 196
Red Special of 1908,
Reed. J obn, 849, 860-1, 882, 888.894-
5,898.
Reinbold, Phil K., 417, 418, 424.
Republican Party, 41-8, 59, 162-8,
190-2, 211-!l, 217, 278, 275, 284,
886-7,401,404-5.
Reynolds, Jean, WI, 298.
Reynolds, Jessica, 206-8, 229, 298.
Reynolds, Stephen Marion, 206-8,
209, 212, 227-9, iilS2, 274, 276-8,
!l8S, 298, 448.
Richardson, E. F., 258.
Ricker, Allen W., 295.
Riley, James Whitcomb, 28,85,58-4,
62-8, 80, 100, 171-!l, 178, 206, 889.
Riner, John A., 102.
Rio Grande & Western railroad,
100-1.
Robertson, Thomas S., 145.
Rochester faction, 208-18.
Rock Island railroad, 155, 164.
Rockefeller, John D., 201, 218, 266,
278,827-8,880.
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 827.
Roderus, Frank, 294.
Rogers, Louis W., 67, 79, 92, 98, 101,
108-4, 106, U6, 146, 169, 190,
204,228.
Roosevelt, Theodore, 97, 190-1, 281,
251-8,262, 272,281, S04, 810, 812,
848,858.
Root, Elihu, 846.
Rose Polytechnic Institute, 228.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 9, 17.
Ruskin, John, 200.
Russell, Charles Edward, 809, 880,
848,846.
Russian Revolution, of 1905, 289; of
March 1917, 842; of November
1917,848-9,855,869,882,888,896,
898, 406, 412-8, 480, 481-!l, 487,
488-9., 448. 4M.
Ruthenberg, Clmrles E.. 842,
854-5,867.895,898.
SAcco-Vanzetti case of 1920-1927,
896,451-!l,458,455-6.
St. John, Vincent, 287-8.
Sl Joseph's Cathedral in Terre Haute,
10.
St. Louis Anti-War Manifesto of So.
cialist Party, 841-!l, 850, 852, 855.
859,862,867,870-1.
St. Louis Mi1"l'Of', 288.
St. Paul & Pacific railroad, 102.
St. Paul Chamber of Commerce,
105-6. .
St. Stephen's Church in Terre Haute,
44.
Sandburg, Carl, 486, 444-5.
Santa Fe railroad, 100.
Sargent, Frank P., 45, 58, 76, 78, 98.
100, 108, 122, 127, 158.
Saunders, William. 40.
Schiller, Johann, 9, 14.
Schilling, George A., 178, 190,449.
Schuhardt, Will, 417.
Schurz. Carl, 190.
Schwab, Charles M., !U8.
Scott, Thomas A., 45.
SeditionActof 1918. St!J6EspionageAct.
Sebree, Shubert, 861-2, 881.
Seidel, Emil, 809.
Shakespeare, William, 68.
Sharts, Joseph W., 862,481.
Shaw, George Bernard, 228.
Sherman, Charles 0., 287-9.
Sherman, John, 110.
Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, 110,
181, 185, 167.
Sherwood, Isaac R., 280.
Simons, Algie M., 262-4, 268,
848,448.
Sinclair, Upton, 228, 880, 880, 888,
898-9, 408, 408, 449. icl
U ptqn Sinclair' 8. Magazine, 880.
Single-tax movement, 258.
Slobodin, Harry, 848.
Smith, Jesse, 407-8.
Smith, O. J . 29.
Social Democracy of America: formed
by leaders of ARU, 195; program
combines colonization and political
action, the Utopians and
Marxists split, 197-9; Debs com-
ments on split, 199, 256.
S(JCial Democrat, 195.
Social Democratic Hf!TlJld, 200, 211.
281, !UO. Wl-4, 258-9, 278, 442.
INDEX
.'JIG
Social Democratic Party: formed in
1898, 197-9; early growth, 199-201,
i08-18; convention of 1900, 2()8.-9,
214; in election of 1900, 208-12;
merges with Rochester faction to
form Socialist Party, 212-8.
Social Roool:utWn. See National Rip-
Saw.
Socialist Labor Party, 96-7, 182-8,
197, 202, 208, 210, 881, 888.
Socialist Party: formed in 1901, 212-8;
policy divisions exist from origin,
218-4; dispute about American
Labor Union, 219-21; convention
of 1904, 280-1; in election of 1904,
280--8; Debs' program for, 284-6,
policies of reform wing of,
284, 286; split by IWW, 286-44;
and_Moyer-Haywood-Pettib'One
case, 248; opposes labor parties,
258; and Negro problem, 258-61;
convention of 1908, 262-4; in
election of 1908, 264--84; and
expropriation of capitalists, 271-2;
sectional divisions within, 288;
Debs' attitude loward factions of,
in 1910, 294--8; reformism within,
296, 807; and immigration, 297,
809; and industrial uniomsm, !l97-8,
808; anarcho-syndicalism within,
807--9, 812; convention of 1912,
808-9; in election of 1912, 810-12;
and Cabin Creek strike, 8!ro--l;
pre-1914 on war, 824-5;
opposes World War, 825, 829-80,
884:-5, 841-2; trade union policy
attacked by Debs, 885; proposed
merger with Socialist Labor Party
fails, 881, 888; new left-wing forms,
842; St Louis Anti-War Manifesto,
841-2,850, S52, 855, 859, 862, 867,
870-1; splits on war issue, 842-8,
857; growth of pro-war sentiment
among leaders of, 880, 842-8,
849-50; left-wing eXI;Mllled in 1919,
SSS, 898-5, 896-8; In election of
1920, 897-405; weakened condition
of, 404, 406-7; in amnesty campaign
for Debs, 408; tries to win Debs'
endorsement, 419-20, 429-80; Debs
affirms allegiance to, 486-7; Debs
not in full accord with, 488-40;
Debs becomes chairman o'f, 446;
in election of 1924, 446-8; con-
vention of 1925, 447-8; Debs lours
for, 449, 451-8; convention of
1926,455.
Socialists of Europe, 824, 829-80,
888, 848-9, 445.
Socialist (Second) International, 824,
829-80, 881-2, 8SS, 871.
Socialist Trades & Labor Alliance,
188,288.
Southern Pacific railroad, 128, 218.
Sovereign, John R., 115, 128, 187,
144,196.
Spanish-American War, 200, 202-8.
Spargo, John, 262, :316-1,848.
Stahl, Carl, 206,
Stalin, Joseeh, 869.
Standard 011 Co., 168, 218, 825, 828_
Standard Publishing Co. St16 Debs.
E. V., Publishing Co.
Stanford University, 280.
Stedman, Seymour, 199, 262-4, 295.
862,864,865,867,868,897.
Steel Strike of 1919, 895-6, 426.
Steffens, Lincoln, 276-2, 278, 805,
408,412-8,416,482.
Steiner, Virgil, 865-6.
Stephens, Madge P., 410.
Sterling, Edward R., 866.
Steunenberg, Frank. 244-5.
Stevens, Samuel M., 50, 82, 88.
Stokes, J. G. Phelps, 848.
Stokes, Rose Pastor, 848, 846, 8M,
862, 865, 870, 872, 878-4, 898,
481-2.
Sue, Engene, 6, 168.
Sumner, Charles, 881, 870.
Supreme Council of the United Orders
of Railway Employes, 66-8, 78-80,
81, 90,442.
Supreme Court, United States, 166-7,
247, 250, 289, 857, 859, 879, 880,
888-4.
Swinton, John, 86, 154,188.
Switchmen's Journal, 280.
Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association,
40,56,78-80,97.
T AFr, William Howard, 262, 272,
275, 282, 284, 8M, 810, S48, 4540.
Taylor, William S., 290.
Telluride, Col., strike of 1901, 214.
Terre Haute conference of 1881,
preliminary to formation of AFL,
87-8.
Terre Haute Daily N8IC8, 70.
Terre Haute Expre8s, 27.
Terre Haute Ga2eite, 29, 69,
Terre Haute Poat, 299, 822, 828.
IH6 INDEX
Terre Haute street car strike of 19M.
226-7.
Terre Haute Tribu1U1. 844, 848, 41B,
449.
Terrell, Joseph Z .. 8B7-B, 8B9, 891.
Tobin, Daniel, 840.
Trade Union Educational League.
459--40.
Traubel, Horace, !l!lB, !l91-!l, 8BB,
4!l5,448.
Trautmann, William E., !lS7-B.
Triner, Joseph, 867.
Trotzky, Leon, 869.
Trumbull, Lyman, 1"68, 166-7, 176.
Tucker, Irwiro St. John, 4i8-{1.
Tumulty, Joseph P., 405.
Typographical Union, International,
8B.
UmON Pacific railroad, 47, lOO-!l, 159.
Union Reform Party, 202.
U nWniMn and SocialiMn" iM--6.
United Shoe Machinery Co., !lSI.
United States Steel Co., !lIB, !lSI,806.
Unity Convention of SOcialist Party
in 1901, !l1!l-8.
Untermann, Ernest, 809, 879.
V ANDJ.LL\. railroad, 6, 24, 801.
Vanderbilt, WiIliam H., 84.
Versailles, Treaty of, 8BS, 40B, 441,
468-4.
Vigo Lodge of BLF in Terre Haute,.
Iill, !l!l, 40,41, 157-B.
Villa, Pancho, 888.
Villard, Oswald Garrison, 849.
Voltaire, Francois, 9, 26, 19!1.
Voorhees, Daniel Wolsey, 7, 27, 5_9.
W AlIASll railroad, 55.
Wagenknecht, Alfred, 844, 854-6,
856, 886, 595, 89B.
Wagner, Phil,
Waite, Davis H., 184, 18B, 177.
Walker, Edwin, 1!l6, 1!l9, 180, 151,
186, 141, 168, 165.
Walling, William English, !l96, 848.
Walsh, Frank P., WI.
Wanamaker, John, 59.
Wanhope, Joshua, !lIiS.
Warren, Carl, !lB6.
Warren, Fred D., MIl, U9-50, !l66,
!l67, !l70,!l8Ii-7, !lB9--9I, !l96, 500,
505-4, 809--10, 8U, 87B.
Warren defense campaign of 1909--ll,
!l90-o, 805-4, 810, 817,.S7B.
Washington, George, 869.
Washington PolIt, 141.
Wayland, Julius A . 178. !lOO, 281.

8Iiil-4,822.
Webster, Daniel, 870.
Wertz, Edwin S., 87l---2, 874-5.
Westenhaver, David C . 868-4, 867.
86B, 869, 87l. 87iil, 878,
879-BO.
Western Labor Union, !lIB.
White, Clarence H., iil2B.
White, William Allen, 41B.
Whitlock, Brand, 189, iil7!l, 280.
Whitman, Walt, BO, H8, !lSiil, 292,425.
Whittier, John Greenleaf, iil02.
Wickes, Thomas H., lOB, 111-2.
llB-9. 146, 14B.
Wilde, Oscar, 426.
Wilkinson, S. E., 64, 75, 79.160, lBO.
Wilson, Noble C., 88B, 868, 8Bl.
Wilson, Woodrow, 810, 8U. 826, 8!l7.
8iilB, 888, 888, 889, 840, 844, 860,
868, 884, 895, 400, 401, 402, 406,
406,407.
Wilson Tariff Act of IB94, 12B.
Wisconsin legislature of 1928, 441.
WISCOnsin, University of, 2B8, 441.
Witt, Peter, 817.
Wobblies. See Industrial Workers of
the World.
Wolf, Morris H., 81B, 8!lO, 862, 868,
864, 866, 86B, 869, 871, 875-4.
Woman suffrage, !l7, 4B, 224-6.
!l99--800, 405-4.
Wood, Charles, 402.
-Woods, William A., ISO-I, 18!l, 158,
164,177-B.
Woodstock, m., Jail, 164, 167, !l88,
422,485.
Work, John M., 26iil. 448.
Workera' Ohronicle, 49:1.
Workers (Communist) Party, 420,
487,48B.
World War I, 824 ff.
Wright, Carroll D., J/)6.
YOUNG, Art, 265.- 811-!l, 860-1, 441.
Young Men's Christian Association,
197,259.
Yung, J. Rudolph, 254-5.
ZlilNGER, John Peter, 808.
Zerbst, Fred G., 891, 898, 897, 400-1.
402-8, 418, 414.

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THE BENDING CROSS

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